


dawn is coming, open your eyes

by Dialux



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fixing Azkaban, Gen, POV Second Person, Percy Weasley-centric, Political Revolution, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconciliation, Redemption, meaningful scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-01-21 05:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21294002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: You are not courageous. Your dreams have always been the bravest parts of you.[Percy Weasley, post-war, pre-reconciliation. The world is broken and he knows it better than most, but Percy's also broken as well. Fixing one might just mean fixing both.]
Relationships: Penelope Clearwater & Percy Weasley, Percy Weasley & Luna Lovegood, Percy Weasley & Other(s)
Comments: 196
Kudos: 461
Collections: 5 Star HP Works, Mayfriend's Favourites





	1. and the world will be better for this

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate titles for this fic included:  
1\. How Percy Weasley got his groove back  
2\. The Life and Times of Percy Weasley, Youngest Minister of Magic, Britain  
3\. on whom can we depend for the/violence we needed yesterday? (part of the poem below, from [this wonderful poem](https://www.peachmgzn.com/anna-gurton-wachter)). BUT I settled on the Don Quixote quote in the end for the chapter titles bc... it's all too meaningful!!!
> 
> Re: rest of the fic, no, I do NOT know where it came from. But this is a very, very long story into a Percy Weasley after the war; after his first (and ONLY!) job (LOVE!!) was ruined (BROKE UP W HIM!!!), and how he had to learn to find a life for him when his ambitions turned out to leave him stranded and rudderless.
> 
> Warnings for familial issues! Death also features prominently because it’s immediately post-war! And politics, as per the usual, because this is My Brand(TM). Hope y’all enjoy!

_there is a kind of love so filled with rage_  
_ that i can’t even look at your face_  
_ even as it exists in my mind._

...

“Hello Percy,” says Luna.

Your eyes are red. Your cheeks are raw from scrubbing hard enough to scrape away the top layer of skin. Your hands shake, when you think too much; they don’t shake at all when you forget, and somehow that’s worse.

Fred is gone. 

It’s not your first thought in the morning when you get up, and that feels like a terrible kind of sacrilege.

“Hello Luna,” you say, and sit down besides her.

...

It isn’t- 

It isn’t like _that. _

But you’re mourning, and you’re learning that you aren’t a quiet mourner. Things tend to explode if you stay still long enough to remember that Fred is- not here. As if he’s passed his love for explosions onto you with his last breath. 

Nobody seems to understand, though. Everyone walks around you on eggshells, until you take your wand and a cloak and walk out of the Burrow one morning, skin itching something fierce. You walk and walk, feet blistering in your boots, hands sweating on your wand, eyes streaming with something other than tears.

“Hello Percy,” Luna says, slipping beside you as if nothing were amiss. “How are you today?”

You’d always ignored Luna, more than anything else. It felt kinder than to shout at her for her strangeness. 

“Fine,” you grunt. “I’m just- _fine.”_

“Good,” Luna says, and lifts her wand, reaching out to you. “Because I have a job for you.”

You twist through a tiny, airless tube for endless moments, and finally land on a cold, dreary island before you can say anything more. It takes you a beat to realize, and then you do: it’s Azkaban. Horror clutches at your heart.

“You sent people here,” Luna says, softly, when it’s clear you’re unable to speak. “You-”

“I _know _what I did.”

“Then you’ll fight back.” She looks harder, brighter, than any Luna that you’ve ever known. You remember, suddenly- she’s lost a father where you’ve lost your brother, but Luna has no other family to hold her, or grieve beside her. “There are cells the Death Eaters sealed, here. Someone has to unseal them.”

“Sealed-” You break off. It’s been weeks since the end of the war; if they sealed them off to only outside influence the people inside might have had a week, at most, what with the lack of water and food. If the Death Eaters also sealed off the air, as most wards tend to do...

“The people inside must be-”

Luna nods. “Dead.”

_Then why? _You want to ask, before she smiles, sad and small. 

“They deserve burials,” she tells you. “Burials in better places than this.” Luna swallows, and there’s a brief glimpse of a girl with sunlight hair in that motion; a girl whom you hadn’t ever loved, a girl you miss, suddenly, with a fierceness that surprises even you. “Flowers and tombstones and grass. Warmth. _Wands.”_

_Oh. _Oh, if their wands were taken- they must be- 

“Muggleborns,” you whisper.

“Dead,” she repeats. “And you helped send them there.”

Ginny would have flung accusations at you, eyes shining like a hundred swords. Ron would have glared until you gave in, and then acted sanctimonious for all of a few minutes before forgiving you. Fred- he’d have probably painted your face with some week-old blood, trying to make his point and horrify you as always. 

Luna doesn’t say anything more, but the undercurrent is clear to you: you can go back home, you can wallow in self-loathing and misery and continue to blow things up whenever someone startles you. Or you can try to fix what you’ve done. You can be of _use, _and it looks like no one else wants to do this job so it’s not like you’ll have to talk to many people.

You’re a Gryffindor at heart anyway.

“Let’s go,” you say, through gritted teeth.

...

That’s how it starts.

Luna asks, and you accept, and it hurts like you’ve got a splinter the size of a fist digging into your chest; but it feels good, too, in it’s own way. 

There are a hundred people in Azkaban whose cells were warded properly when the Death Eaters fled. It was a mix of panic- the Battle of Hogwarts happened so _quickly- _and idiocy and bureaucratic mix-ups, but of the almost six hundred muggleborns that were locked up in Azkaban over the course of the year, more than five hundred escaped. Those who didn’t were the old, the weak, the quiet; from what you’ve been able to deduce, some people even sacrificed themselves to keep holes in the wards open long enough for others to flee.

It’s not like you’re the best warder Luna could have gotten. Hell, Bill’s better than you by a long shot; this is his actual _job- _but your mother’s always depended most on Bill and she actually needs him, now, what with- Fred. Charlie’d flunked Ancient Runes in his third year and taken up Divination instead; George might be better than you, now, but he’s too... something.

_Broken, _you think, and the thought burns inside of you, enough that you hiss out, flick your wand at an innocent bit of stone and watch it explode. _Like a clock._

A hand settles on your forearm. “The nimbopaths tend to be stronger here,” she says. “Maybe we should drink some tea?”

“Just- thoughts,” you say, quietly. Nevermind that neither of you have brought tea with you; what’s important is that her hand feels very warm, and there’s something scarily like guilt rising up your throat. “I’ll finish this ward myself, don’t worry. There’s another one in the left hallway, if you want to map it out.”

Luna leaves. You knead your forehead and get back to work, carving runes with both wand and knife, carefully cracking the barrier until you can get to the gaunt corpse behind it.

You don’t scream when you see the bodies. 

(You haven’t screamed since you saw Fred die.)

... 

Nobody asks where you go, which surprises you more than you’d think. But they just accept that you disappear- even George, who’s been spending the most time with you. It’s regular, at least, insofar as that you leave at dawn and return only past midnight. The only people who see you are Harry and Ron and Hermione, and the three of them are strange enough that they don’t seem to find anything out of the ordinary in your wrinkled clothes or shabby appearance.

Finally, a week- or two, or three- later, Charlie sits you down.

“You need to rest,” he says, quietly. “You’re running yourself into the ground. Kingsley wouldn’t want that.”

_I don’t give a _damn _about Kingsley, _is on the tip of your tongue. _I’ll run myself into the ground if I want to, _is marching right behind it. _I deserve this, _is what echoes behind it all.

“There’s things I have to do,” you say instead. 

Luna’s found a spell that keeps the bodies from decomposing. There’s a long line of them, now, arranged in one of the better-aired corridors of Azkaban; corpses in stasis that you both need to find graves for, names for, wands for. One of them had hair the color of a sunrise, streaked with a dye that sits next to your shaving cream in the store in Diagon Alley. You’d almost broken down three days ago, when you saw that purple box.

When you left that store, there was a box with _Wott’s Ever-Changing Dye, Spec. Ed: SUNRISE! _emblazoned on it, hidden with your daily supplies.

Maybe in a few months you’ll stop dreaming about your sins. 

“I never even see you,” Charlie says. “You’re gone before I wake up, you come back after I fall asleep, you’re looking like a ghost. I don’t know what the _fuck _is wrong with you, Perce, but you’d best stop before you break down. Mum can’t handle you going off your rocker, alright?”

You jerk away. “I’m sorry,” you say, precisely, each word crisp as the apples that grow in fresh spring, new and green and tart enough to draw tears to the eye, “that I am _inconveniencing _you.”

“Shit,” you hear him mutter, before Charlie launches himself forwards; but it’s too late. 

You cross the kitchen’s threshold, and there- sitting, like a fucking mosaic of pieces that, through your tears, looks almost like Fred- is George. George and your mother and your father and the rest of your family, but Fred isn’t there, he isn’t _there, _he’ll never be there to tease you or frighten you or love you, not anymore.

“I’m fine,” you say, and it’s not a lie, though you can see that nobody believes you. “I’m _fine,” _you repeat, and Charlie’s behind you and he puts his hand on your shoulder and it’s not fine, but _you’re _fine, you’re fine and it’s the world that’s not fine at all. 

Fred’s gone, and you’ve got a list of sins that you’ll spend the rest of your life scrubbing.

_I’m not even twenty-five, _you think, _and I’ll never do anything great._

“I am,” you say, and this time it is defiant, as foolishly defiant as ever Fred had been, “fine.”

A shrug of your shoulders, and before Charlie can catch you, before anyone can believe that you’re going to do this _again, _the son who had loved rules more than he’d ever loved family- you’re gone.

...

The cliffside is cold, and you don’t have a cloak or the will to perform a warming charm.

You don’t cry, but when it rains, you don’t wipe your face either.

Your eyes are red.

...

“You haven’t told them?” Luna asks you the next day, when you show up in sodden clothes and hair as tangled as Potter’s on a bad day. 

“Three more cells,” you reply. “We’re almost done.”

You reach for the doorknob, but it clicks shut with a finality that makes you whirl back to Luna. She looks back at you with a look in her eyes that makes you want to wince, her wand held high and stiff between you two. It feels like someone’s made you swallow ice.

“And after that we need to find names, and ground to bury them, and wands.” Her lips, already thin, depress further. “This will not end, Percy. Every day there will be something more, and you have to-”

“You don’t get to tell me what I have to do,” you whisper. 

It’s nothing but the truth. Luna brought you here, but it’s your decision to actually do something instead of mourn. Your guilt is your own; no one, not Charlie, not George, not Luna- not a single person in the world gets to tell you that this guilt is lessened by coming here. They don’t get to _do _this to you. And if you want to spend the rest of your life righting the wrongs of a war that you were on the wrong side of, then there is nothing that will stop you.

“You need to _tell _them what’s happening,” Luna says, reaching out to place a hand on your shoulder. “They’re going to worry. Percy- Fred wouldn’t want you to do this.”

You step away, and slash your wand down, once, twice, thrice. The door falls into pieces, stripped wood, and you step out into the corridor. The wind catches at your cloak and hair, still soaked through. You don’t shiver.

“I signed forty-three documents,” you say softly, watching her, waiting for the inevitable horror, revulsion, hatred. “Did you know that? I signed away forty-three people’s lives. Fred’s the least of my sins.” A breath, and wood crunches under your feet as if they were bones, dried and dead. “You can tell my parents that, if you want to.” The ice in your throat spreads to your arms, to your fingers, to your heart. “But I’m going to break Azkaban’s wards today, and tomorrow I’ll find a burial ground for the dead, and the day after that I’ll find out how to make wands, and you can help me bury these people if you want to but I’m not going to stop, do you hear me?” 

...

You’ve always been good with charms. Penelope’s always been good with potions.

The summer of ‘96, you have a long, explosive fight with her. You hadn’t been living together, not exactly; you’re both too independent for that. But you have an extra towel and toothbrush in your bathroom and the particular brand of rough-grain bread that Penelope likes in your kitchen, and it’s the closest you’ve come to sharing your life with anyone else.

She’s afraid.

_You’re not just a Gryffindor, _she says, blue eyes shining, face earnest, _please, come with me- t_here’s other places you can succeed. It doesn’t have to be _here, _you-__

_I’m not going anywhere, _you say, and you’re terrified, of course you are, you’re angry and grieving and alone and-

And you have done a lot wrong, in your life, but you haven’t run. At least in some small, aching way, you belong to Gryffindor for reasons other than your blood.

Penelope doesn’t say goodbye.

You find a thin vial resting on your bed that night- black and glittering, like the night sky ground into a liquid. You recognize it, of course. By all rights, you should turn it into the Ministry. By all rights, you should put her name on a list of criminals, for brewing one of the most dangerous potions in the world.

You pocket the vial instead.

...

(Your best subject had been charms.

But you’re even better at paperwork. It’s why Crouch takes you on- they mock you, your brothers, your family, but he took you on and he kept you on because you were _good _at what you did.

Forty-three people suffer for that.)

...

Azkaban surrenders the last of its sealed cells quietly, and you levitate the last body to the corridor where the rest have been lying for the past fortnight. Luna is there- her hair looks like moonlight-purified water, colorless and pure in the dull darkness. 

She has a new wand, one that Ollivander made for her after the Malfoys took hers. It’s too temperamental for your taste; it reacts more to Luna’s emotions than to her words, and the results can be unpredictable. The day after you both uncovered one of the younger victims, it had only released saltwater for the full day, no matter what else Luna tried.

But it also matches Luna’s personality. Like right now: there’s a glittering charm bracelet that she’s woven out of light and some old metal scraps lying on the floor, and it shines around almost twenty people’s wrists and throats, pale blue or sparking purple or glowing yellow, like a strange string of faery lights.

"The stasis spell goes from darkness to darkness,” she says, folding one boy’s fingers open slowly, massaging the cold flesh. 

You bite back the first words you think of, the acid bite of your previous meeting still concentrated. “What does that mean?”

“You have another three weeks,” replies Luna, softly. “Then the graves will rise up and swallow them once more.”

The stasis spell will fall, you realize. That’s what she’s trying to say. The spell will last from new moon to new moon, and it will fall soon and the bodies will rot, and that means-

“Graves,” you say. “Wands. We’ll need-”

“No,” says Luna. “Not us.”

_You._

It had slipped your mind, but- yes, now you remember, Luna and Ron and Ginny and Ron’s friends- they’re all heading back to Hogwarts. Another week and they’re going to leave, and you’re going to have to do this alone.

Alone.

You know how that feels. You have it scored straight into your bones.

“I’ll handle it,” you say.

...

The Ministry is silent when you enter it.

It’s too early in the morning; fog still lines London’s streets, and the streetlights are still lighting up the city. The tips of your robes are damp. Your footsteps echo on the marble stone.

(The last time you were here, you killed fifteen men.

Yaxley had asked for tea, and you’d felt some shift in the air- you’d nodded docilely, you’d made the tea with careful, even hands, and then, when they were ignoring you, while they were casually discussing some crime on humanity, you’d poured Penny’s black, shining poison straight into the dark liquid.

You’d waited patiently, calmly, as they dropped. 

Thirteen men like that- and then you left, quietly, and sealed the door shut. Three more men had chased you, up and down the hallways, and you’d killed two with quick wandwork but the last- the last you’d captured and carved, slowly, with your careful, even wandwork, and you hadn’t stopped until he sputtered out the truth of Hogwarts’ siege.

Nobody knows, of course. You couldn’t stand it if they did. But when you apparated to Hogwarts, it was with the blood of sixteen men on your hands.)

Kingsley’s in his office. It’s not the room where you tortured a man, not even on the same floor, but your hands tremble all the same.

“Minister,” you say, as you enter. 

Kingsley looks- drawn. His bones are sharp under his skin, but he burns brighter than you remember from before, as if the pared flesh has revealed some of the fierceness beneath. When he waves you to a seat, it’s a sort of kindness.

“Percy,” he says. “I wondered when I’d see you in here.”

“Ah. I’m...” you think, for a dizzy moment, that you’ll just accept, that you’ll take the opening Kingsley offered and slide back into your old position as if nothing has changed. The nausea that rises with the dizziness clears your head, firms your voice. “I’m afraid I’m not here for the reason you think.”

“Oh?”

You swallow. “Do you know about Azkaban?”

“I read a report on it a few days ago, yes,” says Kingsley, spreading his hand on one of the stacks of papers currently crowding his desk. 

_I could file that, _you think, abruptly seized by a desire for it. _I could sort out this mess. I’d be good at it. I could-_

You could. You’d reshape the nation. And you’d be scrupulously fair, viciously, steadily, fair. You’d know it, because you’d have all of it in the palm of your hand, you’d be the one doing it.

But there are other ways of doing good.

You know that now.

“Someone from Hogwarts is working on clearing it,” says Kingsley. “It’s going well, according to- ah, yes, I think it was Xeno’s daughter- a good girl, with her head in the air, perhaps, but- she’s smart, and got through a stint in Azkaban herself without breaking. Is there a problem with it?”

“No, no problem,” you reply. “But I’ve been working with her on clearing it.”

The world doesn’t stop turning when you say it out loud.

So you continue. 

“We’ve recovered forty bodies. Muggleborn bodies. We’ll need place to bury them, before the stasis spell we’ve put on them starts to breakdown.”

Kingsley pauses. “Ah. I’d wondered- I thought you’d be here the day I entered, you know? But then I remembered your brother. When was his funeral?”

“Months ago,” you say, through clenched teeth, desperately trying to keep yourself from twitching. “A month after the Hogwarts- battle.”

“You’ve been excavating Azkaban all along, Percy?”

The kindness drags along your nerves. You don’t _want _kindness. You want professionalism, and crisp agreements, and not this- this _stupid _hurting rage.

“Not for very long,” you say, though, because Kingsley’s being kind while still remaining within the bounds of professionalism. “It’s going faster than I’d expected. But the stasis spell works only from new moon to new moon.”

“Did you have any particular rituals in mind?” 

“I had some ideas.” You swallow. “There’s- I think, sunlight. That’s something they deserve.”

“Not something we have a lot of here,” says Kingsley mildly.

“There’s charms for that,” you reply. “And I thought- think- there’s an island. Off of Azkaban. It comes near enough to the anti-muggle wards that we won’t need to do anything complex. It’s abandoned, and...” 

_Perfect, _you think, but don’t say. Nothing’s perfect, is what you’ve learned. It’s all just piece-meal attempts at cobbling together a vision that might, if one squints, look vaguely acceptable. But you’ve visited the island and it’s small and rough and scarred and still: perfect.

“I’ll see what I can do,” says Kingsley. 

You force yourself to nod back to him. 

“Percy,” he says, when you’ve gathered your coat and almost managed to leave, “your office remains empty. I look forward to seeing it filled soon.”

You freeze. You force air into your lungs. You say, without turning, “I’ll offer you a list of meritorious candidates when I get some time, Minister.”

“I need help,” says Kingsley, and his hand closes on your shoulder. You shudder. “You’re one of the few people from the old Ministry who hasn’t been arrested, you know, and we need the experience.” He pauses. “And you look like you could use the work.”

“I’m fine,” you say automatically. Then, slower, “And I cannot help you, Minister. I would be far greater a burden than an aid.”

“Percy-”

You shy away from the contact. Pull your robes around you. Nod, grimly, politely, and grind out, laboriously: “I thank you for the opportunity, Minister. But I... there are some things that cannot be- undone. Sometimes, people- people cannot be trusted. Not after they’ve- not after what they’ve done.”

“I know where your loyalty lies, son,” says Kingsley, but he doesn’t try to touch your shoulder once more. “We know where you fought when it mattered.”

Your lips twist in a facsimile of a smile. “All of you keep saying that,” you say, in a voice too low for addressing the Minister, but you don’t care. You don’t care. You are not off the rails completely, but you can taste that wildness and it is heady as much as it is frightening. “As if this war’s lasted for all of one battle. There has been a war in our country for three years, Minister Shacklebolt, and there has been a battle waged in every wizarding home within our borders. I know where I stood for too long- and I know that there are things that cannot be forgiven, no matter what else is done after the fact.”

Kingsley looks- old. His face is set in taut, narrow lines, and his eyes shine in the morning light, almost-gold. “I know this war, Percy.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” you say recklessly, before drawing yourself up. Breathing in. This, at least, you can offer. Advice, if not the work of your hands. “Children died, Minister. Muggleborns. Halfbloods. Purebloods. We all bled for a madman, and the answer that our government has for us is to sit tight. Is it any wonder people sit in their homes and ask when the next Dark Lord will rise?”

“Voldemort is gone.”

“Albus Dumbledore kept secrets,” you say. “And now, so does Harry Potter. History is set to repeat itself, Minister- and it is set to become as we once were, led by Lords and Ladies. Where do we, the common man, lie then? The chattel between lords at best. The victims, at worst. What we lost when we elected to turn our heads and bite our tongues and let a one year old boy become our savior...”

You trail off. Your hands are shaking, now, and your head is aching. There’s a small crowd surrounding the Minister, just a little ways off, but you can see the flash of a pink string quickly moving out of sight. Extendable Ears. 

So now your political stance is solidified. 

Nausea builds in your gut. You look at Kingsley, and regret swims before you. That he was caught even listening to your near-treasonous words might spell the end to his brief tenure as Minister. It’s quite a shame- you rather like him, even if he’s too willing to return to the status quo.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe, and turn, and flee as quick as you can without actually running. 

...

After, you get drunk. Roaringly drunk. As you’ve never done before in your life. 

Impotent anger and bitter hatred and caustic self-loathing. It all melts underneath the touch of the- whatever- that the bartender gives you. At least you’d had the knowledge to go into muggle London, where there’s nobody who’ll report you to your mother; otherwise you’d be waking tomorrow to a howler from your mother and a quick, apologetic Hangover Relief from your father.

Only that’s how it might have been, once, for Charlie and Bill. 

Now. You doubt your mother would even notice your absence. Even if she did, why would she care about one son drinking away his night when another’s buried six feet under the earth? So. No howler from your mother. No potion from your father either, though, and that’s a shame. Thank Merlin you probably have one stored away in your potions cupboard, just in case.

“One more,” you say to the bartender. 

He shakes his head. Anger flashes through you, so hot it hurts. It reminds you of when you were a kid- your accidental magic had only ever come out when you wanted the twins to be _silent. _Once, you’d managed to silence the entire Burrow for a glorious three hours. 

Fred and George had gotten you back for that, with interest; but you hadn’t cared. 

“C’mon,” you say, levering yourself up those last few feet. “C’mon, you know I’m good for it, I need-”

The bartender shakes his head one last time, final, and the fragile bridge holding you to- sanity, or normalcy, or maybe just that land of reason that you’ve clutched onto your whole life- shatters. You lunge forwards and drag the bartender closer to you, and something is glowing at your feet so when you look down you realize that it’s not _something _but it’s you, and that glowing thing is coming from your fingers which are dripping fire.

Then there’s hands around your shoulders, dragging you away from the bartender. Hands that remain firm and tight all the way until you push through the door, and you’re stumbling, you’re choking on all the air you need but aren’t getting.

“Fuckin’ hell,” you hear from what must be the man who’s holding you, “can’t say I’ve ever seen-”

His voice wavers in and out, like a bad connection on the Floo. You vaguely register that it’s familiar; you don’t pay much attention to anything other than the blessedly cold air in your lungs and the rough stone beneath your shins. You feel sick.

“Weasley,” you hear, and it makes your chest want to shrivel up. “Weasley, hey, the fuck’s your name- it was- Percy, yeah, Percy, you hearing me? Up, Merlin, get _up, _would you? Obliviators’re on the way. Best if we aren’t caught here- Percy, hey- _Percy!”_

The world goes dark, and you don’t even regret it.

...

You do regret it when you come to the next morning. 

Sunlight’s spearing through the butter-yellow curtains straight into your eyes. You make a mush-mouthed sound and flap your hand at it ineffectually. But trying to turn over hurts your head even more; you just flop backwards in the end, and close your eyes.

“Weasley?” you hear from a distant corner. 

“Hnngh,” you say. 

“Weasley,” sighs the man, entering your line of sight. It’s a man you vaguely remember- you’ve seen him around, though you think he was a Ravenclaw back in Hogwarts. A prefect, you’re fairly certain, below you. His hair’s damp and he’s wearing a loose tracksuit and he looks... unfairly put together for the misery you’re currently feeling. “D’you remember what happened last night?”

“Mmph.” Painfully, you swallow. Then, still aching, you lever yourself upright. Like hell’re you going to speak to a Hogwarts prefect lying down like an invalid. “Kind of. Fire?”

“You were dripping it,” agrees Prefect. “It was a miracle you didn’t burn the pub down.”

You wince. “I. It. I thought.” Then you pause, take in the entirety of your situation- you’ve just crashed on a stranger’s couch because you were too drunk the previous night after spending a full day getting wasted in a muggle pub and trying to burn it down, all because you chewed out the Minister for something that isn’t even his fault. There’s really only one thing you can say. “I was stupid.”

Monumentally stupid. 

Unfathomably stupid.

“Mm,” agrees Prefect. He walks away, then comes back with two things: a copy of the paper, and a fizzing blue mug. “Drink that first. And- you are Percy, right? Percy Weasley?”

“Yes,” you agree slowly. 

“You’ll want to read that paper, then.” Prefect’s eyes are sharp on your face. “You don’t remember me?”

“Prefect, right? Ravenclaw?” You shrug. “Don’t remember your name.”

“Roger Davies.” Davies nods to the paper. “Read it. And- Weasley?”

“Yeah?”

“Not all of us liked your brothers,” he says evenly. “Not all of us made the right decisions. A lot of us were- not brave. But we survived.” He pauses, and there’s something in his eyes that makes you want to swallow- something bright, and fragile, and perhaps brighter for its fragility. “A leader should know that.”

“‘m no leader,” you say, sighing as you sip the hangover relief. It blazes down the back of your throat. A good hurt, though, so you barely even grimace. 

Then you look up, and Davies is frowning at you. 

“Shame, that,” is all he says. “Think you’d do a good job at it. Always did.”

“Thanks for the relief,” you tell him, before you rise to your feet. 

You shake his hand as firmly as you can manage. Stumble to the fireplace, mumble your address and manage three steps into your home before you collapse from the dizziness. When you open your eyes again, the paper’s crumpled tight in your fists. You let go. Smooth it out.

Your breath is snatched right out of your lungs.

“Fuck,” you whisper. You don’t like to swear, but there isn’t any other way to treat this. “Fucking _fuck. _Oh my fucking god!”

Hungover or not, you have to go home. You have to make sure your parents know-

Know what?

That you’re not a traitor? That you’re not the radical revolutionary the paper paints you as? That with a two minute speech to the Minister, you’re suddenly not the poster child for change from the top to the dregs of society?

_Percy Weasley: Radical or Traditional?_

You steel yourself. Get in the shower. Shave. Pick out some crisply folded robes. Comb your hair back. By the end of it, you’ve made your decision. Then you stand in front of your fireplace for a good five minutes, dithering, before you call out, “Roger Davies’ home!”

You don’t walk back into his home, just call and allow him the ability to pick up or decline. He does, after a pause so long your knees start to ache. 

“Yeah?” he asks, wandering into view. “Forget something, Weasley?”

“My manners,” you say wryly. 

“You said thanks already.”

“I know.” You swallow. You can still back out. But if you say the words, if you give them a voice... you can’t take them back. You can never take them back. “But I told you that I’m no leader. I’m not, you know, not a general. Not a Lord. I’m the normal one.”

“Yeah, I got that,” says Davies.

You tilt your head at him. “I don’t know if I’m the best for this. But... I think I can help you.”

...

You don’t return to the Ministry. But nobody stops you when you start clearing shrubbery to make a proper burial service, so you don’t stop either. You’ve told the Minister your plans, anyhow, and if someone has the temerity enough to attempt to stop you you’ve got his name ready to drop with a flatly insincere smile.

Luna comes to your flat two days later, Ollivander twitchy but at her side. She doesn’t mention the Prophet article, which you’re grateful enough for that you forgive her interference with your family. 

(It’s not like you don’t understand, you soothe yourself. Everybody wants a happy ending, all the hurts smoothed away. And for Luna, who’s an only child, who has been such a source of strength to her father- it must seem even stranger, even crueler, for you not to desire with all your body and mind to return to them. Have the Weasleys not suffered enough? Why are you so fucking incapable of kindness?

But war has pared something away in you- worn down those pieces that wanted things with hard desperation, cut away those parts that made you want love or approval or appreciation. 

What is left of you now?)

Ollivander hems and haws and looks increasingly insulted at your desire to _bury _wands with the Azkaban muggleborns; it’s very rare to lose wands like that, and usually done only for people who have nobody else in the world. No family, no friends. Nobody who’ll take or remember these people. 

You don’t care.

These people had wands, but they were yanked out of their fists. There’s no way to track that down, now, and the injustice of it bubbles in your chest every time you feel exhaustion dog at your heels.

“The- the _waste- _it’s unconscionable- how can I-”

“Waste?” you ask mildly.

Luna leans back, starlight-hair glittering. She doesn’t look away from you, eyes level and warm. You straighten your spine and dig out the boy who’d bargained with pureblood supremacists, words cajoling; gaze unflinching.

“Their old wands will sit in some old pureblood vault for decades,” you tell Ollivander. “We cannot retrieve them; those records have been destroyed, or perhaps never maintained in the first place. If ever they see light of day, they will be in the hands of the very people who took them away.” You lean forwards, and take no joy in the subtle flinch of Ollivander’s shoulders. “We are burying wizards and witches, Mr. Ollivander, and they shall be marked as such. They will be given that dignity.”

His pale, silver eyes say everything he’s too polite to say. 

_Traitor, radical, fool._

_Too angry to be any use. Too stupid to be quiet. Too cruel to be part of the Light._

Well, that’s fine. What use have labels been to you anyways?

_Why do you care so much? _sneers Ollivander, silent, wordless.

And you do not answer: _Because I could have blown up the Ministry if I was pushed, and I don’t know why I didn’t push myself. Because I let the war pass me by and my family is made up of people who cannot forget that, even if they will forgive me. Because I am here, and I can, and so I will._

“I cannot make wands for people I do not know,” says Ollivander finally.

“I have their profiles arranged,” you reply, hand resting heavily on a stack of parchment. “Take your best guess.”

“I have not made wands in- months. The process- I cannot- the speed will be too low to-”

“Then I will help you,” you say lowly, and watch the flash of irritable defiance in Ollivander’s face flare and fade out. “Forty wands. We’ll get this done before the month is out.”

It’s going to be a challenge, of course, but you have never shrunk from honest, hard work before, and you won’t start now. Youngest aide to an official in the history of Britain; sharpest Weasley in a family that you had to claw distinction out of; the face of a burgeoning radicalist movement through the nation. You’ve done it all before, and you’ve done it well, and you’ll do this too, properly. 

Beautifully.


	2. that one man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here you are, alone, and this, too, is a choice you make to strike from the bleeding, ruinous heart of your soul. You want nothing more than to be held by your mother, but you also want her to look at you and not see a living son easier hated than the one buried in cold earth. You can live without their love, and you can live with their hate, but you think you would rather die than accept their hate for something you haven’t done.

You have enough work now that the lack of sleep feels like less of a choice and more of a necessity- sleep’s something snatched in a huddle on the island as you wait for spells to settle, over a stack of wands being soaked in magic-leavening syrup, in those precious delays between meetings at a muggle teashop while discussing the next movements that Roger Davies and his band of merry men ought to make. You are home so rarely that you don’t have thoughts of anything other than the next task on your list, and even then you only slow down when your scribbles become too hard to decipher, exhaustion turning you incomprehensible.

Most of it’s done by then- the island is set up for the burials, and there’s only some five wands left to finish, mostly for the children who don’t have any previous records to rely upon. Another week and it’ll all be over. The Ministry knows that you’ll do the burials proper the day before the new moon, come rain or sun- it isn’t as if you’ve hidden what you’re doing, even if you’ve stayed out of the limelight as best you can. You’re getting enough attention for your political views; best to avoid tainting the burial with any of that. Knowing Rita Skeeter, she’ll call you an attention-whore, a fear-mongerer, a traitor who manages to combine radicalism and traditional values into some terrible mix that’s worse for Britain than even Voldemort.

That’s Davies’ fear, at least.

You are too tired for it. The world’s spinning, and you took your last medically-approved Pepper-up long enough ago that the aftereffects are leaving your muscles jittery. It’s how you know you need the rest: your first night in your flat in almost a fortnight.

In the process of stripping off your tie, you see a pile of letters on the table. There’s also ash- Howlers, or the remnants of them. You grimace and make a mental note to apologize to the neighbors. These walls are thin; even if you hadn’t been home, it’s rude to subject them to such abuse. A silencing charm over it wouldn’t go awry now that the war is over- you’d been too scared that people would kill you and nobody would know to lay one down before- but it can wait for morning.

Then you see the name on one of the letters.

Dark purple ink that glitters silver in the right angle. There’s only one person you’ve ever known who’d liked that ink, and it’s the last person you feel equipped to speak to right now.

_Morning, _you promise yourself, and stumble into your bedroom, and don’t brush your teeth or strip off your socks or unclasp anything more than your outer cloak before you’re asleep.

...

The next morning, you feel much more human after a shower and a steaming cup of tea. There’s some old bread and a week-expired juice that you rustle together into a not-entirely nauseating breakfast, and only after that do you sit down to face the task of looking over the letters.

The Howlers, you suspect, are mostly from your family; they’re the only ones you can think of who know where you live who’d care enough for it. Ron and Charlie, probably- they’re the ones with the sharpest tempers. George would be more creative. Ginny wouldn’t send letters at all. Bill would be dangerously polite in his, to the point of pain. Your parents, though- they just... don’t.

For a moment, you indulge in the bitterness of it. How easily they have abandoned you, as if just because you loved them quieter you loved them less. But you cannot care about that bitterness just now; you reach, instead, for the purple-silver inked letter.

You open it, and read through the dearly familiar hand with something like laughter and another something like tears. Penelope is alive, and happy, she writes: settled in Brussels, and she’s seeing a man from a theater troupe, and she’s considering showing her magic to him- which tells you that she’s more serious than she’d ever been with you. She gets the Prophet delivered, though, and she saw your face on the front cover a few days ago; what’s got into you?

_Or them, _she writes. _I cannot blame you for others’ stupidities; we are both of us too aware of the proclivities of your journalists to truly blame the other, I suppose. I was named a coward and a traitor by them just a few months previous, and now the same names label me welcome to return- I’ve checked! What nonsense._

Penelope hasn’t come back home since leaving, and she’d like to visit some of the funerals- she hasn’t lost many people on a personal level, but there’s a kinship there; muggleborns, her people, the fate she’s escaped by the barest skin of her teeth. But she’s unaware of where to go and of her welcome. 

_A coward’s title I will accept from Death Eaters and journalists and the Ministry, from faceless organizations- but to my face? Of other survivors? Oh, Percy, I believe that might be worse, somehow. I don’t think it likely, but- but the possibility makes me shrivel up inside. _

You trace over the words with your eyes, affection swelling up your chest like sunlight after a storm. Before you can think twice of it, you write your response to her: your laughter, your surprise; you offer to speak to the actor-boyfriend and determine his intentions; then, barely hesitating, you ask her to come to the ceremony on the island.

_I don’t know of anyone who would speak to you in such a manner, _you write, quill strokes deliberately thick and swift. _But if you wished for a familiar face, I will be there- I have arranged some small pieces for it- and you will be welcome. _

_Always, you are welcome._

You fold the letter up, stamp it sealed, and press your hands to your face, helpless love swilling in your chest. It is not that you love her like that- you might; you don’t care to find out right now, when you would rather settle for Penelope’s friendship than her silence- but you’d been so frightened for her, and so unbending, and you cannot believe that this simple, soft joy- complicated though it might be- could belong to you.

It is enough, for now. The late summer mugginess coming through your window. The sour juice, the only slightly moldy bread; your muscles stretched thin with exhaustion and plumped with a full night’s rest. Penelope’s letter and your response and the giddiness, warm in your chest. 

(You, vicious child, desperate, ambitious child; you, furious, lonely, terrible son, who has abandoned it all in favor of _this-_

it is enough.)

...

There are other letters to answer. Bills; hate mail, from Potter’s supporters; some fanmail for those on the other end of the spectrum; a letter from Luna asking about the progress.

Newly refreshed from sleep, you make the connection between the plaintive edge of her words and her position. The letter you write to her is simple enough, assuring her that you’ve got it under control, but you add a line: _Would you like to be there when it happens? I can speak to Headmistress McGonagall if necessary. I believe your presence would be sorely missed if you were unable to make it; this entire venture would not have been done so swiftly or so well without your hand in it. _

Then you think about it, and add some more: _If there are any others in Hogwarts who would like to be there for the ceremony, please let me know. I will try my best to accommodate their presence. _

You grit your teeth against the desire to tell Luna not to invite too many; there isn’t enough space on the island, and it seems somehow insulting to make a commercial event of it. But you trust that she won’t- such consideration _is _present in her, you think, or at least hope- and it’s only proper that you ask her to come after you’ve invited Penelope.

After you post the letters, you pause. 

You and Luna are both purebloods. But there are entire enclaves of muggleborns in parts of Britain, enclaves that you have ignored- out of ignorance and not malice, but still ignored nonetheless.

There’s five days left to the ceremony. You have time to fix this. Not a lot; but maybe enough.

...

Purebloods tended to places like Godric’s Hollow; halfbloods stayed in places like Hogsmeade; muggleborns enjoyed Diagon. But there are other such small communities interspersed through Britain- three main enclaves of the muggleborns, as far as you can tell, and you spend the next two days walking through them and trying to find someone about representing their community.

It’s made difficult by your bearing, and by your Weasley looks, and by the unavoidable fact that their leaders were taken and killed, almost to a one. Those left are those who were too quiet, and their guilt simmers like haze over a fire when you mention what you’ve been doing.

You can understand why Penelope would not wish to return to this.

In the end, you just issue an open invitation- if anyone wishes to come, then let them. You have a feeling too many won’t; it’s too close to Azkaban for comfort.

_That’s the point, _you want to say. _That’s the point! The inhumanity of this. The brutality. It happened _there _and we cannot forget that. We should not forget it. What we did, how we did it, why we didn’t stop them. _

Anytime anyone goes to Azkaban, now, they will see it. Every single year that the Minister of Magic goes for their inspection of Azkaban, the island will be unavoidable. The loss, the unmistakable, terrible yawing loss- it will be unforgettable.

(You pause before you walk out of the door, and fix your gaze on the man who’s ostensibly in charge of the largest muggleborn community in south-England. He’s a halfblood, but his wife was a muggleborn and now she’s gone- gone with their son, gone and he doesn’t know where they are. You have a feeling that he hasn’t gone looking; sometimes, you think wryly, ignorance is better than surety.

“You should come,” you say softly. 

He hunches, and you put your hand gingerly on his shoulder. “I know guilt,” you say softly. He jerks under your palm, but you don’t move away. “I have accepted my share of it, Mr. Gallonge, and begrudged many of those who tried to take it from me.”

“Mister... whatever- I think-”

“But. Do not let that guilt make you turn away from muggleborns now, after all that they’ve faced.” Gallonge pales with his anger, and you continue inexorably: “Don’t let it make you angry. Don’t let it turn you cruel.”

“Who are _you, _you fucking lily-livered-”

“A guilty man,” you say, hitching your bag higher on your shoulder. The weariness you feel then almost bowls you over- not the kind that comes from sleeplessness; the deeper kind, the despairing kind. “That’s who I am. A guilty man. That’s why I know what I’m telling you when I say, _come to this ceremony. _Why I know enough to tell you, _turning your face won’t make you feel better.”_

You snap the clasps of your bag closed and walk away, ignoring Gallonge’s sudden, wracking sobs. You pause at the door, hand on the handle, back taut.

“Come, Mr. Gallonge,” you say gently. “You won’t regret it, I promise you.”

You walk home, back damp with sweat. Your head aches. You regret your words already, but not enough to try to fix any of it. And it’s not anything other than a vague regret; no honest remorse.

_No regrets, _you think, and close your eyes, and starlight bursts into being behind the darkness.)

...

It’s duty, really, that makes you send the invitation to Kingsley. It’s also bitter; stinging prodding acrid furious pushing rage. You want him there, and you want to look at his face and you want to say, _Do I look like I need your pity now?_

You won’t, of course; you are not courageous. Your dreams have always been the bravest parts of you. But you still send that owl, and watch its dark wings turn to specks in the sky.

...

Luna replies that she’ll be there, and so will two others; there’s no need for you to speak to the Headmistress, and she’ll come with her own transport. 

Penelope responds the same way. 

There ought to be fifteen, now, by your count. It’s enough. It will be.

...

The night before the ceremony, you dream of wild roses. Of Fred, his hair fire-red and his eyes like shining blue stones. _This won’t bring me back, _he says, and you swallow, and you say, _Nothing will._

_Don’t make me a part of your redemption._

_Fuck you, _you say, quietly, then with real, weighted fury: _As if I can only do good things because I’m guilty! As if I can only do something well because I feel sorry for you!_

You wake up, heart still thrumming, palms sweaty and brow damp. You strip and take a hot shower; glare out into the dark morning streets and sip cold coffee. Your wand feels alien in your hands. 

“Things have changed,” you murmur in your kitchen, to the ghosts of your family. “Things have changed a lot. Stop trying to pretend like we can return to our life before.”

Or, at least: “I can’t. So stop trying to ask me to.”

Yes. Better. 

Not good, not yet, but almost there. You can work with _better_ and _almost,_ though, and the rage from just a quarter-hour previous is doused in a slow surge of determination.

...

The muggleborns come by boat, hiring three from the shore and propelling them towards the island. On the second, Penelope tumbles out of it with her curls in disarray and a fetching flush over her cheeks. But her eyes are bright; when she sees you, she reaches out and draws you into a warm hug.

“You’ve changed,” she says a moment later, muffled into your chest.

“For the better,” you sigh.

She looks up at you, and there’s grief in them as much as admiration. “If you’d come with me, I think you would’ve been happier.”

Perhaps. You wouldn’t be so old, certainly. There wouldn’t be scars down your calves from shattered masonry. Your wand would rest easy in your hands, and unwanted sounds wouldn’t shoot down your spine like ice.

This guilt wouldn’t sit in your belly.

Or maybe not. Guilt has accompanied you for a long time, the darker side of ambition; the colder side to brilliance.

“And then where would you find a drama student to torture?” you ask, hiding your face in that soft hair for a long moment. Your voice is light, but your chin wobbles; you take the reprieve to steady yourself. 

“I miss you,” whispers Penelope.

“I miss you,” you agree, and step back. 

She opens her mouth, but before she can speak someone calls you away. The Minister has arrived, and you are ostensibly in charge- you make a face at Penelope and go to do your duty. Then Luna and two of her friends fly down on thestrals, whooping with joy- and you sigh, roll your eyes, step forwards to clean up the mess. You’ve no idea how the time passes to sundown, but it does, and suddenly it’s the moment.

The bodies are brought out by hand from the stasis chamber. The only sound is the whistling of the wind over the brush and lavender, and you make sure to press the wand into their stiff fingers, one arm crossed over their chest and the other arm crossed over the wand as Luna’s friend and Mr. Gallonge carry them out. Your throat is dry; your hands shake.

When they’re all brought out, you tap your fingers against the runes you’d spent hours carving. Earth is shoveled out of the ground, and forty graves are dug- in a circle, arrayed around the entire island. A second runal activation hovers the bodies into the grave and fills it with dirt. 

The people familiar with these ceremonies sag a little, relax, think this is over. You close your eyes. There’s nothing left for you; you remember that. This is over, now, almost over: just one last thing to do.

You lean forwards, left hand gripping your wand, and press your right palm flat, full, against the last rune.

Something cracks, and pain sluices down your back like warm water.

...

You open your eyes slowly. There’s something hot on your neck, and it takes you a minute to realize: sunlight. You turn, aching, and flop onto your back, and stare into the hole you’ve carved in the clouds above this island.

Luna is there at your side, white-faced. “Percy?” she asks. “Are you- you were- _screaming.”_

“I thought you were dying,” whispers Penelope. 

The Minister is standing behind Luna, and Kingsley is looking from you to the rune to the sun above you. 

“What have you done, Weasley?” he asks, rumbling.

Your left hand is on fire. Your right feels like the wrist has been wrenched in the wrong place, or perhaps has borne your weight for too long and just collapsed under it. Your eyes are spotted with brilliant aftershocks. But you look up at Kingsley, and you bare your teeth in what could be called a grin if someone squinted. 

“You said it, Minister,” you say. “We don’t have much sunlight here, do we?” You struggle up, turn your head, spit blood. “Have to make it happen, if we want anything at all.”

_“Percy,” _says Luna, and sounds halfway to appalled.

You don’t look away from Kingsley. Someone finally gets the idea of supporting you and gets you to sit up properly by leaning on them. Judging by the cinnamon perfume, it’s Penelope.

“So you did weather-witchery?” asks Kingsley, looking thunderous. “Are you mad? It’s outlawed for a reason!”

“Oh, I used all the proper anchors.”

More than, actually. But still: weather-witchery. You’d been terrified for that reason alone. The stories of that kind of madness are- were- the stuff of your childhood nightmares. But you’d also looked forwards to the madness if you’d been wrong, and the contradictions of it all put together is enough to make any sane man insane. 

“It’s madness!”

“It wasn’t half the risk you’re thinking.”

“Your family’s already lost one son, Mr. Weasley,” he says, so low nobody seems to hear except for you and Penelope, whose hand spasms on your elbow. “You’d repay their pain with another?”

Something is set alight in your chest. Something is blazing, and you think that if you knew where your wand was there would be real flames around you. You look up at Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt, and you say, “You know nothing of losing a brother, Minister,” with all the measured, biting fury you can manage.

Kingsley backs up, just a little, the shadow of an apology on his face- it’s overstepping, even for a Minister. “I meant- these people are dead. We ought to focus on the living. Such is war; such is the aftermath of war.”

It’s conciliatory, and you think that you ought to accept it. But there’s a sudden breathlessness in your chest- a sudden wash of rage, hotter than even before, like fire given oxygen to burn, and you’re scrambling to your feet, and you cannot know what your face looks like but the Minister actually steps back at it, eyeing you with alarm.

“These people,” you say. “These _people. _They died in darkness, Minister Shacklebolt. Innocents and children died in darkness, and you think we should move _on? _You think we should forget that? You think just- what, burying them is enough?” You check yourself, swallow; then you look at him and say, loudly, “We took their wands and their families and their lives and now you would have us take their sacrifice as well?”

_“Mister _Weasley-”

“Harry Potter is a coward,” you say. Spread your hands and ignore the pain, shrug through it. “Yes, I said it. Either that, or maybe- if I’m being charitable- he’s stupid. Our world is broken! Forty lives here, Minister! _Here! _How many others? How many shallow graves- how many just disappeared- and you want to return to normal life?” You jerk your arm at Mr. Gallonge. “His wife and son gone, as if Vanished! And while half the population mourns, the other half wants to _move on?”_

Kingsley is very pale, and his bald pate shines in the sunlight very brightly. “This is not the time for this kind of talk.”

“What, political talk?” You snort. “These people died. Our world is broken. If we accept it as it is- we’ll see another Dark Lord by our death, and I won’t see that happen. I won’t, damn it all. We’ve lost too much to lose anymore.”

“That,” he says, “is _enough.”_

You don’t want it to be enough, but Penelope’s hand closes over your wrist and the sudden, bright pain is enough to make you almost dizzy. You close your eyes; rest on her shoulder.

“We’ll talk more about this later,” says Kingsley, and it sounds like a threat.

You nod tiredly.

Penelope doesn’t let go of you, not even when you feel well enough to bid goodbye to the rest of the people with gritted teeth and a stiff back. You don’t let yourself think at all; just mindnumbing grins, easy looks. Handshakes and promises and words that taste like something rotting on your tongue. You ask Luna if you need to talk to McGonagall, and she refuses, and you tell her to head back to Hogwarts. And now there’s nobody left, just you and Penelope, and you sag in her grip until you’re kneeling on the harsh stone under your boots.

“I need my wand,” you say hoarsely.

Penelope doesn’t answer. You look up at her, at her curled hair, at her wan face. 

“I thought you knew,” she says.

“What?”

“It burned up.”

_Something cracking. Something in your chest. Something wooden._

_“What?”  
_

“Percy,” she sighs, and reaches forwards, and wraps her arms around your chest. 

You don’t know why this is so shattering. But that had been _your _wand, freshly made, the grain always polished and the handle always shining. You’d curled around it when you slept and your dreams have always had the scent of pine; in the darkest times, in those months at the Ministry under Death Eaters, fearful and angry and hurting and alone, you’d burned pine sticks in your fireplace and let the smoke-sweet scent sooth the tremors out of your palms. You turn those palms up now, and there is a black scar down your left hand: the last scorch of your wand, burnt into your soft skin.

“Percy,” says Penelope again, and you look at her. “Let me take you home.”

You look up. The clouds are thick everywhere but here, and the storm ringing the tiny island makes little raindrops splatter over your skin. But above you there is a clear sky; the first stars are glittering. Sunlight and stars, for forty people you did not save, forty innocents who died in darkness. One wand. One scar. Sunlight and stars, from now until the end of time. 

You lean down, press your forehead to Penelope’s shoulder.

“Okay,” you whisper.

...

Both of you apparate to the street outside your home, and you usher her inside with the air of a man who’s seeing relief and rest after a long, long time. You’ve just locked the door when she asks, gesturing to your hand: “D’you want me to heal that?”

“Um.” You blink. Penelope isn’t good at charms; you aren’t certain how to tell her that you’d rather bind up the wound in the muggle way than let her do something that’d likely require an amputation.

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve got a potion.”

“Right,” you say, and let her guide you into the bathroom. 

She blinks at the empty counters. Sends you quick look, half-wary, and removes a potion from her cloak that’s viscous, glutinous like starshine caught and woven into liquid. 

“That’s... different.”

“Mmm.”

You’d thrown all the hairproducts and lotions out in the weeks after the war ended and Penelope didn’t return. There’s only your usual soap and shaving kit in the cabinets, and tucked behind your extras of both: a boxed, glittering bottle of rainbow hairdye. But Penelope wouldn’t know the significance of that, and you can’t find the energy to explain it to her. 

“Do you remember,” she asks abruptly, pouring out a generous dollop onto the towel before capturing your hand. You look at her, at her soft eyes and kind face, and you feel your heart throb in your chest like some old, torn muscle. “The day that I left?”

“Yes.”

“I left behind-” she shakes her head, and presses down. You breathe through the sting of the magic, focus on not curling your palm into a fist. “I thought, when I left, that you would die. I don’t- I don’t know how I could do that.”

You do.

War unearths cowards everywhere. You don’t blame her for it; you cannot, not when she’s done what you’ve always wanted to do. You cannot blame her for escaping ruin and death, not when she’s in front of you and so vivid.

“I left something behind,” says Penelope, so quietly you wouldn’t be able to hear it if you weren’t this close to her. 

You look up at her. _This will hurt, _you think.

“Yes,” you say gently. “You did.”

She stares, and then goes bone-white. “Oh, God. You _used _it.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“Percy-”

“War, Penny. It was- _war.”_

“I,” she says, and her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t want to make you into that.”

“Into what, a killer?” You shake your head. “I would’ve done it anyways. That potion just... helped me get out. Helped me survive.”

Penelope closes her eyes, then says, “Come back to Belgium with me. It’s- I- please. Percy. _Please.”_

“I can’t.”

“Is it your family?”

You laugh, a little, jerky and short. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Your ambition’s going to be the death of you.”

“A snake in lion’s skin,” you agree, and your voice is a shade too bitter for the conversation. 

She presses down on your palm, harder, and you hiss at the sting but don’t flinch. “You don’t be ridiculous.”

You swallow. “It’s just that. You know. I’m fine with being without them. Being alone. I _am.” _Penelope doesn’t look like she believes you, so you elaborate, waving your free hand wildly, “But you know what! I’m not okay with being humiliated for it. I don’t care about having someone next to me when I wake up! I don’t need someone making me breakfast, or caring about my career! But- but I hate people looking at me and feeling _sorry _for me, as if I’m unhappy or smaller than them for it!”

You can’t quite catch your breath, and the flushed edge to your cheeks leaves you a little dizzy. 

Penelope loops her fingers around your chin and tilts it up, gentle as moonlight. 

“By people,” she says, “you mean your family.”

“I hate them.” You close your eyes. “They want me close, but they don’t want _me, _do they? They want someone that’s more like them. Someone who’s _easier, _as if they aren’t Gryffindors, the lot of them. Cowards, Merlin damn them. Cowards and-”

Penelope tightens her fingers on the towel and you break off into a wordless, pained grunt. She then ties it off into a makeshift bandage before stepping back and surveying the entire tableau with cool eyes.

“Out,” she says calmly.

“What?”

“Out,” she repeats. “I need to freshen up, and you have only the one sink.” The chill in her voice fades, a little, and she says, “Why don’t you go get some food ready?”

You blink. It takes a moment for you to understand: this is Penelope’s way of calming you. How many times have you done this, the two of you? You seething and fuming; Penelope giving you something to calm you down. In Hogwarts it had been soft words, a re-shuffling of Prefect rounds so you didn’t have to be near the twins’ normal mischief spots; after Hogwarts it had been advice, a non-judgmental, listening ear, a sharp word when you went too far; and now, it’s silence. Privacy. Time enough to gather yourself once more.

“What, one-handed?” you ask, and your voice is already quieter, though it wobbles awfully. Then, you pause and add, deliberately light, ignoring the tremble: “Wandless?”

She quirks a smile at you. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

The door shuts in your face, and you lean your head on the wall next to it, breathe in and out, wobbly. Merlin, but you’d meant every word that you just said.

How you wish any of it were a lie.

...

You make dinner by the simple expedient of calling the nearby restaurant and ordering in. The food’s not something you can have everyday- it’s got the tang of too much flavor- but it’s good and cheap for a weekday’s relaxation, and they deliver it quick, and Penelope always enjoyed it more than you, anyways.

She comes out in normal clothes, face washed and wrists scrubbed neatly. It shouldn’t have taken her longer than five minutes but she’s taken nearly thirty- it’s enough time that you’ve got the food arranged on your shoddy coffee table, which you’ve been meaning to fix for years now, and some water from the kitchen sink to slick back your hair into something approaching manageable.

Both of you talk a little, and joke a little more, and eat a little more after that, and when you fall asleep it’s together, feet tangled but arms and heads hanging off opposite ends of the sofa. You stir the next morning when Penelope tucks a wool blanket around you, stupid with warmth, and don’t even wake properly as she presses a kiss to your head and murmurs a goodbye. It’s long past that you finally wake up: sunlight spilling over your lap, sticky with sweat and lazy like you haven’t felt in years.

You feel- quiet.

It’s been so rare in your life, this contentment. This quiet joy. 

(Joy: cutting open envelopes to see a string of O’s. Winning praise out of a professor who loathes everyone. Being the best, and knowing you’re the best, and taking pride in it. Helping people; being the person students go to. 

Joy: being _important.)_

You close your eyes and lie there on your lumpy sofa, for just a little bit longer.

...

A few hours later, you’re fresh out of the shower and scrubbing your hair when you hear:

“Kingsley says you tried to kill yourself,” says Bill.

You jump and shriek, clutching at your chest a little too theatrically. Bill raises his eyebrow at you and you subside, muttering under your breath. Merlin damn him; you’ve only lowered the defenses around your flat to let Penelope in, and that literally hours previous; Bill’s taken full advantage just the morning after. You eye Bill closely, wondering what he wants, though you can’t quite bring yourself to ask.

“If I tried to kill myself,” you say instead, acidly, “I’d be dead.”

“Percy,” sighs Bill.

“You could at least accuse me of something after I’ve had something to drink.”

“Didn’t know you drank during the day.”

“Coffee, Bill, _Merlin,”_ you snap, and turn into the kitchen; pour out a measure of milk and coffee beans, set up the stove-top apparatus. You aren’t very surprised to turn around to see Bill behind you, in the kitchen doorway, observing you. Rolling your eyes, you pour out some more milk, enough for generous servings for both of you. “Give me some credit.”

“It’s past ten,” he says neutrally.

“Is it,” you reply dryly, lifting one shoulder to the clock set very prominently above your head. 

“Thought you were a morning person.”

You smile, gratingly bright. “Turns out I like some mornings off.”

“Particularly after doing weather-witchery?”

“If you’re going to talk about me behind my back, then at least have the courtesy not to come to my face and tell me things you’re gossiping about. Bad gossiping courtesy, that, to tell the person you’re gossiping about what’s being said.”

Bill sighs, yet again. “We’re worried about you, Percy.”

“Why?” You lift your eyebrows back at him. “I’m fine, _Bill.”_

“Mum wants to talk to you.”

“And yet, for some strange reason I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Don’t be a fucking _child,” _says Bill sharply. “I’d expect this from Ron or George. Not you.”

“No?” you ask, very quietly. “Well, I’ve been a disappointment to all of you for quite a long time, I think. I’m sure you’ll learn to adjust.”

Bill doesn’t answer. You almost expect him to storm out, but you forget that he’s gotten the most of your father’s calmness- he and Charlie, to be fair, though Bill a fair measure more than Charlie. You hand him the coffee without sugar, just like he likes it, and pass him to sit at the dining table; Bill just follows you and settles opposite you, and he looks thoughtful.

“You weren’t ever a disappointment,” he says carefully, trying out the words like they’re sharp against his teeth. “I mean. How could you be, Perce?”

You hate, _hate, _that you know what he means. 

Prefect. Head Boy. Brilliant grades. Better job. Fought in the war. Survived the war. You aren’t Bill and Charlie who left home and your parents’ thumb; you aren’t Fred and George who’ve never applied themselves; you aren’t Ron, either, or Ginny, who have little enough natural ability or desire to succeed in your father’s footsteps. 

What more can anyone want from you?

“I’ve been disappointing our parents since I left Hogwarts,” you say, and it sounds wry, through some miracle of magic. “I’ve listened to the wrong people, they think, and made the wrong choices, and think that just because I was wrong about one thing I’m going to be sorry about it all.”

“And you’re... not.”

It’s your turn to be careful- not because you’re worried about Bill’s reactions, but because you want him to _understand: _the core of you might not be good, but it isn’t cruel either. Or so you hope, and strive, viciously, desperately.

“I’m not sorry about wanting things,” you tell him. “I’m not sorry about listening to the Minister. I thought he was doing the right thing; wasn’t that what we were taught? To listen to those in charge. To believe them. To trust them.”

_Where was I when you all got the other lessons?_

To be mistrustful. To do what needs to be done, and damn the consequences. 

But you suppose that they, too, never had those lessons, the other six. It’s just that you trusted other people, and they trusted your parents, and the coin you flipped came down trumps for them. But still: they’re family. You shouldn’t be left empty-handed, no matter how high the wager. 

It’s just that you’ve learned your lesson now, and everyone thinks it’s too late.

“What about this- this new... thing, that you’re doing?” Bill asks. “With the- with the politics. Calling Harry out. Pitching yourself against us.”

You snort. Take a sip of coffee, long and the perfect warmth to rest on your tongue. “I was taught to trust the Ministry, and the Minister, and if there’s one thing I learned with this war, it’s that I shouldn’t. That I can’t. That our world is- on some very, very deep level, broken. But all of you seem to think this war is over.”

“You’re saying it isn’t,” says Bill. “Percy, that’s- that’s just paranoia. You can’t-”

“This war started for a reason. Grindelwald. You-Know-Who. That’s in the past fifty years. There will be another, if things don’t change, and I’ll fucking burn this country down before I let it happen again, see if I don’t.”

“Merlin, that sounds like a _threat.”_

“Isn’t it?”

“That’s dangerous talk.”

“We need change,” you say savagely. “Change, bottom-up, top-down. _Change. _You let Kingsley Shacklebolt take the reins of something broken in our country, and you expect him to have the sole power of fixing things? You expect things to get better and not to paper over the cracks? You expect- you expect things _will _get better?”

“I know Kingsley,” says Bill, deathly quiet.

“I don’t. Nobody else does.” You set the cup down; stare at Bill. “The Order of the Phoenix does not make up any meaningful percentage of the British magical population, you know. Anyone from there making decisions- becoming Minister- is about as legal as having Pius Thicknesse as Minister just a few months ago.”

Bill’s staring. “I,” he says. “You don’t sound like my brother. At all.”

“When I see someone doing something wrong, I’ve never been able to keep quiet.” You fold your hands in your lap and nod at Bill. “And you can take that to Minister Shacklebolt, and our parents.”

“I’m not doing this for them!”

_Ah, _you think, queerly satisfied at the first sign of anger from Bill. It isn’t entirely unexpected, though; you know how sour guilt can taste on a tongue, and how anger can be used to paper over the cracks. 

“No?” you ask Bill, and rest your hand on the table, palm up, so he can see the scar running down it, the line where your wand has scored itself into your skin. “You’ve been on their side for a damn long time to switch now.”

“I am not on anyone’s side,” says Bill, voice completely flat.

“Oh, _no.”_

“What?”

“You don’t get to do that,” you tell him, and there’s a smile on your face that feels ghastly, that feels like some facsimile of joy. “You don’t get to pretend that your silence meant you didn’t take sides then.”

“We’re a family,” he says softly. “Percy, underneath it all, we’re a _family. _We just want you back. Safe. After- after everything, we don’t want to see you destroy yourself because you feel- guilty.”

“Guilty?” you ask, derailed for a moment. “Why’d I feel guilty?”

“Because of-” Bill hesitates, “-Fred.”

You are motionless for a long minute. Blind, deaf; more stupefied by Bill’s sheer gall than enraged. You wish you had your wand. You wish you could curse him into oblivion, and then kill someone else. Surely there would be something you could do. Surely there’s someone out there who deserves the death penalty, and you can go and stick a knife in them, and feel the gush of hot blood-

You jerk your head up when Bill’s hand closes over yours, the sting of his skin on your still-healing scar.

“Get out of my house,” you whisper.

Bill leans closer. Ignores you. “Mum wants-”

“I don’t give a _fuck _what Mum wants,” you hiss, and rip your hand out of his, and stumble away. Press your palm onto the back of the chair, brace yourself and lean into the pain. “I don’t care what you want, or what anyone else wants. Get _out.”_

“We’re trying to repair this!” exclaims Bill, throwing his own hands up. He looks- for the first time- truly irritated. “We keep trying, Perce, but Merlin knows you aren’t make this any fucking easier!”

“Good. _Good,_ now-”

“And if you kill yourself it won’t bring Fred back, and it’ll kill Mum, it will, so stop being so selfish for once in your goddamn life and-”

“-you don’t get to come into my home and-”

“-come _home,_ will you, you overgrown-”

_“Where were you?” _you scream, and Bill stills, staring at you. You are shaking; suddenly, you realize, there are tears in your eyes. No. There are tears streaking your cheeks. “Where were _you, _Billy? When I was in the Ministry and fighting to live for one more day? When I walked into the Atrium and checked the fucking lists to make sure you all hadn’t been killed overnight? When I was signing papers to send innocent people to Azkaban because I _didn’t have a choice?”_

“You chose them,” says Bill, so quiet you can scarcely hear him. “You chose that.”

When Potter broke into the Ministry with your brother and Granger, they’d asked you to come in for questioning. You were caught up in a flooded corridor, and even today you’re certain that delay- and the consequent backlog that meant nobody realized you never turned up for the questioning- is the only reason you’re still alive. Months later, their ill-fated trip to Malfoy Manor... you heard some people talking about it and went home to your flat instead of working, and only worked up the courage to return to work three days later, when your brother broke into Gringotts. 

You chose the Ministry over a shadow-organization that your parents espoused and suffered so much for it, so quietly, so lonely. You don’t know in what world your choice could be the wrong one.

Apart from this one.

And now that you want to fix it- now that you are willing to _try- _they’re still standing against you.

“I chose that,” you say, in a voice of ground glass. Bill winces. “I chose the Ministry over you, yes, fine, that happened. I did that. But when I wanted to leave, when it was clear what was happening- who came for me then? Who came to my house and told me that they’d help me out of the _rut _that I’d gotten myself into?”

“I’m here now.”

“Too late!” 

“I’m sorry. What d’you want me to say? I’m sorry, Perce, and so’s everyone else, but-”

“Too late,” you interrupt him. “Too late, and too little. I got myself out of the Ministry, and I walked into the battle at Hogwarts thinking I’d die for it. I never thought-” you break it off, turn your head, breathe. “-it should’ve been me in that explosion. Not Fred. I know that. But I’m not going to be made sorry for surviving.”

Bill looks horrified. “Nobody would- who the _fuck _would’ve wanted that?”

You press down against the chair, feel the strain in your muscles, the flare of pain down the back of your neck like slivers of ice. “George,” you say. “Ron. Me. You.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” says Bill lowly.

“Then don’t pretend like you loved me more than him!” you say loudly. “Don’t act like he wasn’t easier and better at everything, like I was never enough for any of you! Stop looking at me like that- you know it’s the truth.”

“I don’t know what-”

“I heard you,” you say, jaundiced and bile-bitter. Merlin and Morgana above, you loathe this. But let them know that you know; you’re done with this. “When I was at home, over summer.” Something like comprehension, sun-soaked and wrinkled and wine-sour dawns on Bill’s face. “And I’m done. I’d rather be alone than never good enough.”

You wave a hand, and you don’t know why, you don’t know how, but the door swings open as if you just cast _alohomora. _Wandless magic; the bone-deep need for you to get Bill _out, _now. Ten minutes ago.

“Tell _that _to our illustrious mother,” you say. “To her, to Dad, to all of them. And Bill?”

He’s crying, you see, as if ashamed, as if stunned. As if he cannot believe what you have become, or what he has done. What all of them have made you. _Good, _you think viciously. _Good, good, good. _

“Yeah?”

“Be glad I don’t have a wand,” you say, and it sounds less angry than tired. “Or I’d have cursed you out a long time ago.”

_“Percy,”_ he says.

“Please leave,” you say, and perhaps it’s the _please _that does it this time- he goes, and you close the door behind him manually, fingers tangling over the latches, before you slump into a heap at the base of the door and close your scarred palm over your eyes and cry, hard enough that you cannot breathe.

...

(Love. You are not so far gone that you’ll accept their love laced with pity, laced with scorn. _Priggish Percy, too studious to know right from wrong. _Here you are, alone, and you want nothing more than to be held by your mother.)

(Here you are, alone, and this, too, is a choice you make to strike from the bleeding, ruinous heart of your soul. You want nothing more than to be held by your mother, but you also want her to look at you and not see a living son easier hated than the one buried in cold earth. You can live without their love, and you can live with their hate, but you think you would rather die than accept their hate for something you haven’t done.)

...

You take the day off. You take another two days off. Disconnect your Floo; shut the windows; ignore all owls. The letters pile up but you read books that you’ve been meaning to get to for years now; you cook by hand, make rich desserts that leave you faintly nauseous; use the scraps of your cupboard to make a proper lunch for yourself. You clean the underside of your bathroom tub for the first time in two years. 

You sleep, and you dream half-dreams. Someone screaming, a flash of flame, laughter high and cold. You wake shaking, leg-muscles twitching, the scars throbbing. 

Cold, you wrap yourself in Penelope’s blanket. Burn the last of the stash of pine twigs with a tiny fire, and huddle over it. 

...

(Call it selfish. Call it survival.

If there’s anything you’ve learned, it’s that all the world depends on the name you give.)

...

Three days later, you work up the energy to look at the Prophet. The tea you’d made just a few minutes earlier spills all over the table when you read the heading.

Your first instinct is to call Davies and get his opinion on what must have been a shitshow over the past days. But your second is to find out what’s _happened,_ and it’s that one that you listen to; you won’t be of any use to anyone if you can’t provide an independent critique or thought process. So you throw on an old jumper and head to the corner shop, buy the paper and a packet of chewing gum to avoid strange looks, and head back to your flat with your head down. 

_SUNNY AZKABAN, _shouts the Prophet. _The Man Who Banished Clouds Forever. _A picture of you beneath it but above the fold, taken with a muggle device, motionless; but it’s clear why they’d accept this one over all the others. It’s caught the exact moment your wand blazed up. 

The phantom pain twinges over your palm. Fire and fury, too much magic in too slender a piece of wood. You should’ve thought of it, though you aren’t certain what you could’ve done differently. Staffs take too much time to make, and you aren’t on good enough terms with your family to ask for any inherited object like it.

“Okay,” you mutter, and flip through the rest of the articles.

It’s not much. They’re subtle enough about it. But you’ve read enough- commissioned enough- articles to know how to read between the lines: Dangerous, radical, revolutionary. Every name they could stick to you, they’re going to try their hardest to manage. You want to laugh; just a few months ago, anyone calling you anything other than stodgy would have made _everyone _call it a joke. It’s rather amazing how quickly things change.

“So Kingsley’s got you on his roll, does he?” 

You hunt through the bylines with a gimlet eye, and confirm it. The majority of the lot are from those journalists willing to take bribes. The rest are those who’d rather follow the winds of change than bite into the headwind.

“Well,” you say, and flex your fingers, your scarred hand, relish the quiet anger in your veins.

You’re back. You’re _back, _and you won’t rest until this world is better. Until your world is better. Damn your family- you haven’t listened to them in a very long time, and you aren’t going to start now. None of the people in power have ever really contended with a Percy Weasley on a mission. It’s a force to be reckoned with, really; all your professors will attest to that.

First things first, though.

A wand.

...

Ollivander raises his eyebrows when you go to his shop. _Took your time, _he seems to say, without any words at all. You don’t bother answering him. Just nod at him. Slip your cloak off. Roll your wrists, and firm your jaw, and look at him, expectantly.

“Your old wand, Mr. Weasley?”

“Pine and unicorn hair,” you say, and swallow. “Nine inches. Inflexible.”

“Good for non-verbal spells, yes, yes.” 

Ollivander returns with a few boxes, and you can smell it, the pine within. For a moment, you _want _that- but then you shake your head. You’ve changed. You aren’t the eleven year old boy who received that wand with joy. Those pine sticks you burned in your flat will be the last pine sticks you ever burn.

“Not pine,” you say softly. “I think- something else is needed.”

“Is it?” Ollivander studies you, then waves to a chair. “Take a seat, Mr. Weasley. I believe this will take some time.”

...

“Aspen and unicorn hair,” he murmurs. “Strange. Very strange.”

You pause in counting out your money. “Is it,” you say, in as discouraging a voice as you can manage. 

“Well,” says Ollivander. “Aspen I could have guessed from the beginning- you have certainly grown into that- it is a wand fit for revolutionaries. But unicorn hair? Unicorn hair is stable, Mr. Weasley, and steady. It does not favor change at all. In fact- I’ve heard of only one wand with aspen and unicorn hair in my life, and that was for James II’s pet court sorcerer.”

“The one who died inside of a year?”

“And wanted to pave the way for magical-muggle relations,” agrees Ollivander, eyes gleaming approvingly. “Instead, we got a backlash. And-”

“-the Statue of Secrecy.”

“You do know your history.”

“I’m afraid of my history,” you whisper. 

The Wizarding World doesn’t like change. It has to be forced on them. It has to be coaxed on them. Can you, Percy Weasley, do that? Can you dance that line? Is it possible for _anyone, _much less you?

“Aspen,” says Ollivander. “For revolutionaries. But unicorn hair, for steadiness. Aspen for change and unicorn hair for consistency. I do not know what you will do, Mr. Weasley, but I know that it will change our world.”

You close your eyes. Maybe. Maybe. Just-

“Merlin knows we need it.”

Heat flushes through your chest. “What?”

“We need it,” repeats Ollivander. “Our world has been chipped away, year after year, dark wizard after dark wizard. Those who don’t recognize it are those who didn’t lose anything last time, or those who lost too much. It is regrettable that those people tend to be those who drive change in our world.”

You breathe. Sunlight. Stars. Your wand, blazing. The names you will pick up out of the mud and make your own. This hope, like a living sun in your chest.

“Not all of them.”

He smiles at you. “No,” says Ollivander. “Not all of them.”

...

Here you are. Young man, old soul. You have wanted so many things in your life. You have gained so many things in your life. You have lost so many things in your life. Here you are, with your feet planted, with your arms up, with your voice loud and singing.

Let them try to silence you, Gryffindors and Slytherins both.

...

"Davies,” you greet him, and wave him to sit down before he can get more than half out of his chair. 

You’re running a little late, but you can’t quite bring yourself to feel bad about it- your hand feels so right on your wand, and you hadn’t realized how vulnerable you felt without it until you had to go days without one. You discreetly dispel the water-repulsion charm that kept you dry in the rain outside and nod to Davies’ sandwich.

“Is it good?”

“No,” he says, and grimaces. “But the beer’s acceptable.”

“I’d prefer to keep a clean head.” You tap your fingers against the wooden table. “So. What’s happened over this past week?”

Davies stares at you. There’s a spot of mayonnaise on upper lip, and you feel rather irrationally irritated at it. 

“Er. Are you kidding or something?” At your confused look, he hastily amends, “You’re the news around here, Weasley. The whole- _thing- _with the island. Your dance with the Minister. Nobody’s talking about anything else.” He leans forward. “Did your wand really burn up?”

“Yes,” you say, even as your mind ticks away at the idea that you- Percy Weasley, are _famous. _“That’s why I was late. Had to get a replacement.”

“And the-”

“-other candidates?” you ask smoothly. “For Minister, I mean.”

Davies looks away. “No luck,” he says. “They’re- well, you’ve met them, haven’t you? They aren’t the most electable lot in the history of the world.”

“They aren’t the least, either.”

“The second the Prophet calls them a coward, they’ll run for the hills.”

“You’ll need _someone,” _you tell him, frustrated. “Someone who can stand against Shacklebolt. I told you- find someone good enough, and I’ll make sure there’s an election. But it has to be quick!”

“Or what? What’s the deadline you’re aiming for here? Because I can’t see it, Weasley!”

“All Hallow’s,” you say grimly, and watch him pale. 

“But that’s- oh, Merlin, we’re screwed.” Davies slumps in his chair. 

You shake your head. “There’s someone out there who can do it,” you tell him. “You know it. You can feel it- _I _can feel it. We just need to find them.” You stand up. “Remember, Davies: someone brave and cunning. Someone smart and hardworking. They’ve got to have moral fiber to stand up for what the believe in and the knowledge to know when to compromise, you get me?”

“You’re asking for the impossible.”

“Believe me,” you say humorlessly. “When I ask for the impossible, you’ll know it.”

...

Thing is, Davies isn’t wrong.

His people are running scared, and they’re burned from a war they’re ashamed of not playing a role in. They don’t have the backing of the Order, which is for all intents and purposes the remnants of Dumbledore’s party- and they don’t have the protection of the fanatical quote-unquote-reformed Death Eaters either. Anybody with enough understanding of magical Britain politics will know that people in the middle _will _get forced out, attacked on all sides and crushed into sand.

It just feels... wrong.

No. Not _wrong; _false. There’s something missing, something that you aren’t seeing. 

Because there’s more people in Britain who aren’t in the Order or in the Death Eaters to make up both squads ten, fifty, hundred, thousands of times over. Easily, easily, _easily _more. So what you’re trying to reconcile right now is the fact that the vast majority of the population doesn’t have anybody representing them- the Wizengamot is made up of either members of Ancient and Noble Houses or Order of Merlin recipients- and no way of making their voices heard outside of the Minister, and for the past twenty years they’ve elected the most incompetent men you’ve ever seen in his life.

Leaving aside Scrimgeour and Thicknesse, of course, because they weren’t elected and were equally as bad for the country as not.

Assuming they aren’t stupid, the people voted for incompetence. Assuming they aren’t stupid...

Your wand sparks, and you can feel the pieces tugging together. The idea at the tip of your tongue. The truth that you’ve all been avoiding for so bloody long.

The people- the vast majority of the magical population of Britain weren’t voting in the most incompetent person. They were voting in the most _centrist _person they could get to run. The problem was that person would have to be thick-skinned enough to take the mudslinging, and also acceptable enough to get nominated by the Wizengamot, and why would they allow someone who’d make changes become Minister?

Which was how Britain had Fudge for- Merlin above- nigh on ten years. And Bagnold before him wasn’t much better, though she’d ridden the coattails of her popularity for defending breaches of the Statute of Secrecy for as long as she could. 

You close your eyes. _Courage, _you think. That’s what you’ll need. If what you’re hypothesizing is correct, you have a chance of getting what you want. Of changing the world. Just a chance; nothing more than that. But you’re a Gryffindor. The people who will stand against you will not be the majority of the people. You have a base that feels alienated and silenced, a base that can help you- and so you have that chance. 

You’ll hold onto it with your strongest Sticking Charm, and you’ll _make _it more than it is right now.

...

“I have an idea,” says Davies.

You slant a look towards him. 

“You want someone who’ll stand up for what’s right,” he says. He isn’t looking at you right now; he’s staring off into the rain-splattered window. “Someone who’ll compromise. Someone with name recognition and a sharp head. Someone who can win.”

“Yeah,” you say. “I told you this just-”

“Why don’t you try out?”

You pause. _“Me?”_

“Head Boy. Gryffindor. Weasley. People know who you are.”

“I’m not-” _popular._

“You’re the best we’ve got,” he says. Claps your shoulder and slides out of the booth. “Think about it, Weasley. You might well be our best chance.”

He leaves the inn, and you slump forwards so your head’s pressed against the cool wood of the table. 

“We,” you whisper to it, a secret you’ll never tell anyone else, “are _so _screwed.”

...

But when you canvas the results in some of Davies’ closest friends...

Well. The results aren’t _unfavorable._

...

“Even if I become the person you want to elect- we don’t have enough support underlying it. I checked out the numbers; it’ll take us weeks longer than the six months the the election’s supposed to run.”

“Easy answer, then.” Davies blinks at you. “We take it slow. Steady. Not this halloween. Next time. Spring equinox, right? We’ll start the process then.”

_That long though? _you tap your fingers on the table. It’s Davies’ apartment that you’re ensconced within; there aren’t bars or cafes open late enough with the privacy you need to finish this. _Kingsley won’t let up on the smear campaign. Can we last that long? Who knows what he’ll find out- and then we’ll be finished, before we even start._

But still: better not to shatter your wand before you start, and you’re confident that Kingsley won’t find out about the ritual before you do it. The only reason you know is because of Scrimgeour, and Scrimgeour knew only because he was a paranoid man who liked reading the oldest law codes for fun. 

“Alright,” you agree. “It isn’t going to be easy, though; it’s going to be hard work.”

_The hardest work any of us have ever done._

_But, _you think contemplatively, _the best work as well._

...

You have enough paranoia not to trust in the unsigned letter asking you to come to Hogsmeade as you leave Davies’ apartment, but also enough curiosity to want to _know- _few people would actually care to figure out a way to send you a letter like this, worded politely- but commanding and not threatening.

_And if it turns out they’re actually trying to hurt me, I don’t need to show my face. _You tap your head and suppress the shiver of a disillusionment charm over your spine, and apparate out as quietly as you can manage. 

Through the window of Rosmerta’s inn, you realize that there’s almost nobody inside; there’s a huddled hag in a corner and two other tables occupied by the normal Hogsmeade denizens, but it’s the table in the center that catches your attention.

Well, you can’t say that he didn’t warn you. A talk in the future, indeed.

“Minister Shacklebolt,” you say, striding inside and setting yourself down firmly. Kingsley straightens, but his fingers twitch towards the wand in easy reach only minutely. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Is it?” he asks cryptically.

“I’d hope for it to be so. I always admired you, you know.”

“But not any longer?”

“I disagree with your methods,” you tell him. Measure your words; Kingsley wasn’t a Gryffindor, or at least you don’t think so. The game of words and half-promises will always favor him over you, because you haven’t been trained in it. But still: just because it’s unfavorable terrain doesn’t mean you don’t cross it. You just need to have some more care. That’s fine. You’re experienced in being careful like almost nobody else. “I think that you are- were- a brilliant war-time leader. But we’ve entered peace, now, and we need to accept that. And our government should reflect that in its highest people.”

“People like you?” he smiles, amused. “I’ve my own sources, Percy. You’re trying to canvas support for becoming Minister. It won’t work, you know.”

Ah, your temper. If ever there was a Weasley trait-

“You don’t know that,” you say lowly.

“The Wizengamot will never nominate you. Who’ll get you the votes you need?”

_Half the people must say aye to a nomination to become Minister. One hundred and fifty-two. I’ll never get that many. But you think that’s going to stop me?_

“Let me worry about that,” you say. “You ought to worry about how you’ll stop me in the election.”

Kingsley eyes you. “If you become a threat to our country,” he says, “I _will_ have Aurors arrest you.”

Briefly, you let the indignation rise up inside of you before you choke it down. Throttle it, so no flames drip from your fingers; so you’re just watching Kingsley with thinly veiled rage.

“If you think I could assassinate you, you wouldn’t meet with me here, without any guards. What d’you _want,_ Minister?”

“Always so respectful,” says Kingsley slowly. “I trust that you won’t- ah- snap. But I also don’t know what might push you over the edge. Your parents tell me that you’re angry.”

“And so does Bill, I expect.”

“An angry man is capable of many things he would find irrational while calm.”

“What. Do. You. Want.”

“Peace,” says Kingsley simply. “I want you in the Ministry again, Percy. I know how good you are. I’d like for you to do your work again- good work, hard work. Merlin knows we need those people again. You can’t be happy like this.” He pauses, and then adds sympathetically, “The bills also add up, I know. Particularly when there’s no way to replenish funds.”

_A dig at my _family, you think, a little incredulously. _Wow. You must be very desperate._

“If I step into that Ministry,” you say instead, “I’ll burn it to the ground, Minister, I swear it. It deserves burning. All the people killed- you wouldn’t know, you weren’t _there- _all the people who bled and were tortured on those floors- you can’t make it clean again. You can’t just try to move on. It’s just going to make things worse.”

“Percy-”

“Grindelwald came from the purebloods,” you go on recklessly, flatly. “You-Know-Who from the muggle world. What’s next? A halfblood raised in a Wizarding World that won’t admit to making his witchy mum kill his muggle dad?” Kingsley stares at you, and you bare your teeth at him. “You don’t get to be Minister by patching things together that have been proven to be problems. You claim to be better? Look to the future, and _be _better. Solve the problems you _know _are festering.”

“It’s paranoia,” whispers Kingsley. “Merlin. The Ministry really messed you up, son.”

“I’m not ill,” you say coldly. “Don’t try to-”

“I think a stay in St. Mungo’s would-”

He rises with his wand, and you leap out of your chair, avoiding his _Petrificus _by a hairsbreadth and then his _Stupefy _by sheer chance. You look at him, and the knowledge of what’s happening is catching you- tearing you apart. The fear is swallowing you, but you stand there, balanced on dragon’s teeth and flame burning you from the inside-out.

“You’re going to really regret that,” you say, still staring at the chair glowing a faint blue.

“Percy,” says Kingsley, stepping towards you, eyes still shining with concern and calculation. 

Calculated concern. 

_Fuck._

You won’t make it to the door; you know it. It’s rude to apparate indoors.

You don’t care.

You throw yourself sideways and even as Kingsley shouts a spell, you’re apparating away. You land in a damp, grassy field, already nauseous. Sicking up your guts doesn’t feel good, exactly, but once it’s done you do feel better; a little more level-headed. Then you look up and see the tall, gleaming stones.

_Merlin, _but you love your subconscious sometimes.


	3. scorned and covered with scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Disenfranchisement’s the first step to a dictatorship.”
> 
> “And dictatorships have body counts. Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er. Hope you enjoy this weirdness?

Across the entire isle of Britain, light bursts into being. Witches and wizards and all whose rights have been enshrined in the Code of Laws of Britain are treated to a brief, dazzling display of light.

It emanates from a small stone circle near London.

In the mind of every person who can vote, Magic-

(not magic, not here; this is Magic in its oldest form, constructed from thousands of years of using magic in the land and harnessed by ancient wizards to give wizards and witches a voice in a leader unbound from Lords and now unleashed by a singular Weasley desperate for his world to become better)

-speaks, to announce: _All those who wish to become Minister shall be chosen on the day when sunlight and shadow are of equal lengths._

Some people weep. Others curse. Others wonder how this can happen, because nobody’s even so much has heard of this phenomenon.

But in a small, shadowed stone circle near London, a slender man sags with relief, and closes his eyes, and lets himself rest for a few moments.

Then he gets up and apparates away, and there is nothing left to mark his presence but the crushed grass and electric stink of old, great magic.

...

_I need you. I’m so sorry. I need you._

You’re at the end of your reserves by the time you apparate home; between the adrenaline crash from escaping Kingsley and casting a spell that covers the _entirety of Britain, holy fuck- _and then sending a letter across the Channel to Belgium, you’ve used up most of your energy. When you land in your living room, your vision whites out for a long, dizzying minute. You breathe slowly out, then attempt to breathe back in, and through the pain you realize that the drumming isn’t just your ears. 

There’s somebody at the door.

It takes more energy than it should, but you stumble over to your kitchen and drain the bitter coffee decoction you’d left for yourself that morning. The energy boost is enough to give you strength to cast a diagnostic spell and see who’s at the door- make sure it’s not an Auror- and you see Penelope, disheveled and banging loudly.

You undo the latches with another flick of your wand, through gritted teeth, and let her in, before you put them back up with one final swish. Only then do you let your wand drop from your hand, and sink to your arse in the kitchen, knees trembling wildly.

“Percy,” gasps Penelope, and catches you, guides you down. “What happened? You look like- oh, Merlin, you look _terrible. _What-”

“I got angry,” you say. Laugh, a little, choked on the inside. “I shouldn’t’ve, but I did, and now I’m going to have to face the consequences.”

You’re going to hate the consequences a _lot, _you think, and hunch inwards, miserable.

She presses her fingers to your pulse with thin, light fingers. “Oh,” she whispers. “What do you _do _to yourself when I’m not around, you stupid, stupid man?”

...

You explain it to her that night: the Wizengamot is made of up three hundred and four individuals. They must either be members of an Ancient House or hold an Order of Merlin. Half of them must vote in favor for a nominee to become Minister of Magic. Only after that can the general population choose, and that’s done by simple plurality.

What you’ve done just... bypasses the nomination process under the Wizengamot. But it can only be done under a very specific set of circumstances:

First, it can only be activated once every hundred years. The last time this exact ritual was done, it was immediately after the Third Goblin Rebellion in the eighteenth century. Second, two Ministers must be ousted within one year- implying intense political upheaval. Between Fudge, Scrimgeour, Thicknesse and now Kingsley, you’re certain you’re in the clear. And last, the person who activates it must be willing to risk their magic that they’re doing this for the _country, _and not personal gain.

Feeling that Magic scour you clean, study you in such minute, careful detail- 

You shiver. It had hurt. You aren’t in any hurry to do it again.

But if you’d been mad- or if you’d been doing this for your own ambition- the ritual would have killed you. Now you can throw this in Kingsley’s face- in _everyone’s _face- and challenge them to do better. Nobody can talk about your cowardice after this, after you risked magic tearing you apart to become Minister. 

...

(Nobody needs to know how you’d been ready to die if the Magic chose it, either. There are some secrets you’re allowed to keep.)

...

(Kingsley might well have been telling the truth when he said he didn’t know the limits you would go to save them from themselves. This is another secret you promise yourself you’ll keep.)

...

“Have you gone mad!” shouts Davies.

You look up at him. At the red, high flush of his cheeks. You are strangely, steadily calm.

“It will be difficult,” you say. “But it is not impossible.”

“We’ll lose!”

“No, we won’t.” You stand. Repeat what Penelope had told you, her advice drummed into your ears. “You know why? You know the only way to change an election’s results? To change the people voting. So get people out there, Roger.” You lean forwards and _look_ at him, and you are burning alive, furiously, furiously, with this purpose. “Get people out there, and get people excited, and talk to them. They want things to get better and so do we, and that- that is what we’re going to do.”

You pull your cloak around you and head outside. Davies- Roger- calls after you: “And where’re you headed off to?”

“The newspaper.” You turn, flash him a smile. “It’s past time people knew who I was, don’t you think?”

...

The Prophet doesn’t like you, but you know how to handle that- Fudge had put you in charge of the smear campaign against Potter three years ago, and while your contacts might have changed, while your relations might have changed, the basic concepts underneath it aren’t difficult to grasp. It’s just the opposite. Not a smear campaign. Not any distortion of facts. Just...

The truth. 

Plain and unvarnished.

Audrey Smithson is a woman with sharp grey eyes and long hair that she keeps pinned back by two large bejewelled butterflies. Her hands are ink-splattered, but the page she brandishes in front of you is blank.

“You said you wanted to talk,” she says levelly.

“Yes,” you reply. “An exclusive interview.”

“In exchange for?”

“Would a promise be enough?”

Smithson tilts her head to the side, just a little. “It would depend on the promise, I think.”

“No competition,” you say, and watch something flicker in her eyes. “If you record it faithfully, if you tell the truth- you’ll be the only journalist with access to me.” You lift your eyebrows. “No embellishments. No bribes. You manage that, and you’ll have the exclusive on me and my campaign until the _end _of the campaign.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had a campaign worth writing about,” murmurs Smithson.

“Just because most of the Prophet is ignoring me doesn’t mean there’s nothing to write _about.”_ You pause. This isn’t going to work, you can feel it. She’s unconvinced. But you have some cards left to play. “Do you know what I’m fighting for, Ms. Smithson?”

She draws a damp circle on the wooden table with the very tip of her index finger, and then looks up at you through her lashes. “Democracy,” she says lazily. “Reparations.”

You nod, once. Twice. Thoughtfully. The faint flicker of interest in her eyes dims, and you know she’s going to walk away. No journalist would willingly chain themselves to a campaign as doomed as yours. Certainly not someone as good as Smithson.

“That, too,” you say. “But I’m fighting for peace.”

“Contradiction, that.”

“And I’m a Gryffindor.” You spread your arms. “Me! Contradiction in the making, you know.”

“Weasley-” Smithson shifts, a little, almost uneasily.

“Why’d they make the Minister, Ms. Smithson?” You don’t wait for her to answer; just barrel onwards. “They taught us, in history, if you remember- to protect the people who were not sworn to one Lord or the other. And you know how they did it.” You swallow, throat tight, and don’t look away from her. She understands you; she _does. _You can tell. You think you can tell. “They kept the balance. They enforced peace.”

“Peace,” says Smithson challengingly. “And not freedom.”

“A trifecta is necessary. Peace, justice, _and _freedom. Balance.” 

“And you’ll manage that?”

“We need someone strong enough to say no.” You keep the flames from dripping out of your fingers with the barest will. “Someone who will not shove the Dark into the corners of our world; someone who will not elevate the Light to grand heights. We need justice that isn’t served at the point of a sword, and peace that will last for longer than a mere decade, and freedom to everyone in our borders.”

Smithson pauses. “And for those whose very nature is infringing upon others’ rights?”

_Werewolf rights already? _It’s an old political litmus test; you don’t have polling to give her a measure of how your people feel. But what you do remember is the old adage of debates: if you aren’t certain of something, challenge the premise.

“They will not be welcome,” you say coolly. “Until and unless they shall agree to strictures that ensure they don’t hurt anyone else, we cannot accept them. But if, for example, vampires were to agree not to pillage and rape through the country if left free- if they allowed us to bind them, and change their nature, as we have done to the merpeople in the Hogwarts’ lake- I don’t know why we would not let them free of their limited lands.”

Something like respect- unwilling, grudging- shines in Smithson’s gaze. 

“So,” you say, daring to reach a hand out. “Tell me, Ms. Smithson. Curious yet?”

“Yes,” she says, and takes it. “I don’t think you’ll win, Mr. Weasley, but I’ve read that ritual you did. It wouldn’t work for a madman or a self-serving man. I don’t know what that makes you, but you’re going to be someone to watch, I think.”

You drop your hand, and grin at her crookedly, and say, “A patriot, I think, and a Gryffindor patriot besides.”

...

A leader must be pragmatic. This you know; but still, when Roger tells you to ask your parents, you resist him; you don’t want to swallow that last, bitter pill. You have built a life for yourself without them, and now to return- to beg, as if you were wrong from the start, as if you’re _sorry-_ sits, cold, in your belly.

But Penelope’s words wrap around you like silken wind, soft and warm, and you hear them: _If you’ve begun this, then you must finish it, Percy. No matter what it takes. If the price of your failure will be the country’s future, then what is anything else worth?_

_I won’t kill people,_ you’d whispered back to her, amused and horrified and exhausted. _I won’t-_

_Then don’t._ Her hands, her chin. So warm on yours. _But know what you’re risking, with every decision you make. Know what you flirt with, when you refuse to do something. _

“Get me some parchment, then,” you say wearily.

...

Harry Potter’s endorsement would probably make you unbeatable, but you have no illusions: he will almost definitely speak for Kingsley, what with their shared history, and with him will go both Ron and Granger. What you’re aiming for with this letter is to speak to your mother. 

The killer of Bellatrix Lestrange would mean… a hell of a lot.

But she is your mother, and the wounds dealt to your pride are not yet healed.

The response is short. So short that your apprehension grows, and your adrenaline with it. 

_DINNER IS AT SEVEN AT THE BURROW EVERY SUNDAY. WE WILL WELCOME YOU IF YOU COME THEN._

Sunday dinner is family dinner. Clearly you’ve ruffled some feathers; clearly your mother has no desire to be kind to you and ease you into the family. But she has accepted you at least. Your successes with them have been so rare recently- you will take everything that you get with a smile.

…

“Dad,” you say when you land in the Burrow. The fireplace is now blazing at your back, normal flame instead of Floo-fire. “Hello.”

“Percy,” replies your father, so neutrally you want to wince. 

You straighten your spine instead, and nod with every ounce of starch-collared respect that you can manage. It’s the wrong decision- you know it as soon as you do it- but you can’t quite forget the way you’d stood in this very hallway years and years ago, and your father told you not to care about your job, and you shot back words you knew would hurt him, so furious your hands shook and shook and shook.

You’ve always had one response to criticism: prove them wrong.

And by Merlin and above, you wanted to prove nobody wronger than your father.

“If you’re here to apologize for leaving your mother,” your father says, very deliberately, “you should do it quickly. Before the others arrive, I think.”

_Swallow my pride, _you think, fiercely._ I will do what I must. What does this matter if it isn’t done? If we have a Minister as a puppet once more, if we devolve into yet another war-_

“And to you,” you say aloud, voice tempered like an iron weapon rich with blood. “I owe you an apology as well, Dad, I know. I’m… sorry for leaving like I did. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Oh, Percy,” cries your mother, throwing herself out of the kitchen and catching you in a hug so tight you cannot breathe. She must have been hovering right out of view, waiting to hear your response. “Oh, I knew- I knew you’d come- oh, _love-”_

_“Mum,”_ you say. 

You close your eyes, soaked with such feeling that it hurts. Your throat aches, and you bury your face in her shoulder- it isn’t any feigned emotion, this, just that pure flash of hurting aching love that comes from meeting loved ones after too long apart. You’ve been wanting this hug for such a long time.

“I love you,” she whispers, and it isn’t a lie at all when you pull away, a little, and then hug her again, tightly, so tightly, before you say, “I love you, too.”

It isn’t a lie.

For one long, long moment, it’s the entire truth, too.

…

Dinner is strangely and upsettingly normal. 

You eat the heavy food; you keep your head down. Everyone is there. Potter and Granger and all your siblings and even Luna. You grin into your pudding when Ginny says something crass enough to make Potter turn bright red and look fearful- the Man Who Lived, who defeated Voldemort, terrified of your little sister!- though you ensure nobody sees it. Everybody seems content to ignore you, and you’re okay with that while things are still so tentative.

It’s George, as usual, that ruins things.

“So, Perce,” he says, so abrasively cheerful that your shoulderblades start to itch at the very sentence. “Heard you were trying to be the Minister.”

You set your fork down carefully. “Yes,” you say, through a dry throat. “I wanted- that’s why I wanted to talk to you, actually. Things are picking up on the campaign trail, and-”

“Oh, is that why?” mutters Ron, and you break off to stare at him. He looks up at you, mulish and bright-eyed, and continues, “Thought you would’ve wanted to talk to us because we were our family, actually. Not because we were famous.”

“Ron,” you say, with your mother, but you sputter out of words after that. He’s right; you wouldn’t have come back if you didn’t have to. Through the tightness of your throat, you see his face flush.

“Would you look at that?” asks George, and oh, would _you_ look at _that?_ There’s the nasty edge in his voice that’s never quite disappeared when talking about you. Seems like it took just a few months to get his grief for Fred out of his system, especially if it’s for bullying _you. _“Perce can’t even deny it. What, did the fucking Death Eaters finally teach you not to lie or something?”

_“George!” _says their mother, horrified. 

“You promised to behave,” says their father lowly.

George holds up his empty hands. “I promised not to hex him. No wand, Dad, I promise.”

You don’t move. If you do, you will do- something. There is a hatred here, and it is so overwhelming that you cannot breathe for it. There is love, yes, but inextricable is the hate, strong _because _of the love and not despite it. 

Then you see Bill’s eyes, and they’re so pitying that it snaps whatever thread of self-control you had.

“You’re right,” you say levelly. “The Death Eaters did teach me not to lie. They put me under a _Crucio _seven times in that year, and five of those came after Ron broke into the Ministry. You’ll forgive me for taking that lesson to heart.”

“Percy,” says their dad, and he sounds tired, and you are- _done. _

Your family? 

This, _this _is your family? 

“I,” you say. Pause. Then: “You will _not _make me feel guilty for being the one who survived.”

You can feel the fire coming up now, unstoppable, all-consuming, and you stomp to the door in the stunned silence enveloping the kitchen. You yank the door open and pause at the slap of cold air. 

“I thought you’d be proud, you know.” You don’t look behind you. Just stare into the wind in front of you. You don’t even know if they can hear you. “I’m changing things. Making them better. Trying to, at least. Guess you all just have a problem with what I do, no matter what it is.” You turn, then, and the fire is actually singing in your veins now. Fix your gaze on your mother, who gasps and recoils. “I hope,” you say, deliberately venomously, “you’re glad that you won’t have to deal with me ever again.”

George opens his mouth, says something; but you leave before you can comprehend the words. The fire smooths down your fingers, blazes, and you let it fall without hesitation. The snow melts into water, and then to steam, and still you’re kneeling on dead, icy grass, red fire flaring around you. You can scarcely breathe for your rage. 

“Percy,” you hear, and the shock of it startles you straight out of your anger.

You jerk upright and see Luna. Her pale eyes; the curved clack-clack of her necklace; the shine of her hair. 

“Luna,” you reply tiredly.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“My father didn’t want to serve in the war,” she says calmly. “I would have done anything to keep him safe, but I don’t think I could bear to live with him even now. Not after what he’s done.” She steps closer and presses a hand to his arm. “I forgot that family can be... more than just love.”

“Yes,” you echo. “More than love. Merlin.” Shaking, you rub a hand through your hair and look at the earth around you. It’s damp enough that your fire hasn’t spread, but there are black handprints where your palms had pressed against the grass, the earth below seared to ash. The rage feels very cold, seeing that, seeing what you’re capable of. What you’re family can make you capable of. And- you don’t know why you even tried. But you look at Luna, who’s followed you out into snow without even a cloak to keep her warm, and smile crookedly. “Well. It isn’t as if Gryffindors don’t behave like complexity’s a disease. You’d be forgiven for thinking us incapable of seeing things in shades of grey.”

“You should go back inside,” she tells you.

“To be yelled at more?” You look away. “I can bear a lot, you know, but. My pride’s all that’s left to me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Percy.”

You snort. “I’m not.”

“I went to Iceland for a week,” Luna says, settling against a snowbank and casting a charm that makes the room glow with a dozen fairylights. “Right after the war ended. It was wonderful.”

“Luna-” 

You are _not _in the mood for a lecture on some weird animal that probably doesn’t even exist anymore.

She ignores you. “They showed me how they handle avalanches. Because it’s quite scary, you know, all those slopes- people can get hurt. Badly. And sometimes people are stupid, and sometimes they go to areas that they shouldn’t, and in really difficult areas- they cause avalanches to prevent larger ones.” You frown, and she continues, hands wrapping around the fairylight idly, still not looking at you. “They do that by ski cutting. Cut a part of the snow off, and the rest will follow, only controlled. And the slope’s that much safer.”

“I don’t understand.”

Luna finally looks at you, fist glowing a weird purple, eyes glittering from it. She smiles at you, a little sadly.

“You don’t cause an avalanche by tackling everything at once, Percy. You need to find the weak point, and use that.”

“And what’s the weak point here?”

Luna tips her head back, and she releases the fairylight. Only it isn’t just a light any longer; it’s a butterfly, or some winged insect, and it flutters away into the dark night. When she looks back at you, her eyes are dark.

“I didn’t attend the funerals because I didn’t think I could bear it, and when I came back I wanted to fix _something. _But there wasn’t anything left to fix.”

“Until you heard about Azkaban.”

“We can’t fix ourselves by fixing the world, Percy,” says Luna quietly. “Are you sure you want this?”

“I’m not sure what I’ll become if I don’t do this,” you say, more honest than you’ve been with anyone else in all this time, the rawness of it startling even to you. “I’m afraid of that. More than anything else.”

“That’s not a good answer.”

“It’s the truth.” You wave your wand and direct a mound of snow onto the handprints, easily erasing the only obvious evidence of your presence. “It’s the only truth I have.”

_It’s definitely the only truth you’re getting from me._

“Okay,” says Luna. She sounds thoughtful. Then she says, brightly, “Come to the Hog’s Head next week. And Percy? Come prepared.”

“For _what?”_

“The ski cutter.”

...

Hermione waits for you in the Hog’s Head. 

Her hair is loose about her face, and her hands are tight on a butterbeer. Her eyes, when she turns to see you, are at once resigned and irritable, like she wants to feel angrier than she does.

“Hello, Percy,” she tells you.

“Hermione.” You nod, seating yourself in front of her. “I’ll admit, I hadn’t expected you.”

“I hadn’t, either.” She pulls a coiled strand of hair away from her eyes and lifts an eyebrow at you. “Not until Luna told me, of course. She didn’t convince me until last night.”

“And what convinced you?”

“That you have a strong following,” says Hermione clearly. “I’ve heard what people are talking about in Hogsmeade, even if Hogwarts is very anti-political. And the _Prophet’s _started talking about you, which I hadn’t thought you’d manage.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be taken in by the _Prophet, _not after everything you’ve been through.”

“I’m not. But I know they won’t bother to cover you unless you’re an actual force. Someone they can’t ignore.” Some emotion lightens her face, like the glow of metal held a little too close to flame. “I do know something about being so annoying them so much that they don’t have a _choice _about writing about you.”

You remember, suddenly, the sour look on Skeeter’s face when you approached her to discuss Harry Potter a year after that disastrous Triwizard Tournament. Her dismissal of your propositions had left you both startled and irritable; you think, now, that Hermione’s hand must have been heavy on her spine to keep her quiet.

“So.” You force your hand flat on the table, breathe out through her nose so she can’t see how nervous you are. This must work. This _has _to happen, or the death-knell of your ambitions will surely toll out over the entirety of Britain. “Tell me. What do you want to know?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because it needs to be done.”

“Percy.” Hermione looks like she doesn’t believe you. She looks like she finds your words false, and your answer full of levity.

“It _does,” _you say levelly. “Have you gone and spoken to the people?”

“Which people?”

“The people. Of Britain. Whom the Minister must _minister _to. Whom the minister is responsible for.” You nod at the slow growth of comprehension on her face. “Those who did not fight in the war, on either side.”

Hermione eyes you closely. “Ron would call them cowards.”

“And if you weren’t close to Harry Potter? Would you then have held such a prominent position in the war? Or would you have left to Australia with your parents, if you hadn’t had such strong anchors holding you back?”

“I’d never run away!”

“Not even with everything pulling you in that direction and nothing rooting you here?” You shake your head. “Hermione. Common sense need not be anathema to courage. You know this. Sometimes the smartest thing to do in a war is to run away. Sometimes survival matters more than how you survive.”

“But for those people you just named, survival was the _only _thing that mattered!” exclaims Hermione. “Forget pride- they’d have accepted what happened, and they’d have mourned their losses, and they’d have gotten on with their lives. That’s not cowardice- or not just that- but it’s... heartless. On a deep level.”

“On an unforgivable level?” you ask softly.

She inhales sharply. “I don’t know.”

“You must.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s more people like that than you’d think.” You wait, letting the words swirl in your mouth like stones in a river, before dropping them out well-polished and shining and true. “Far more. And if you’ll ensure none of them get a say in their government... well. I’m sure you can imagine.”

Hermione’s gone very pale. “Disenfranchisement’s the first step to a dictatorship.”

“And dictatorships have body counts. Always.” You look into her eyes, and can see what she’s thinking. “Yes. We must act. The status quo isn’t enough. That’s what Potter and Ron and everyone else want- they think it’ll be enough to go back to how it was when Voldemort first fell. But it won’t. Because if we leave it like that-”

“-it’ll lead to another war, won’t it?” she asks. “That’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Yes.”

You thought this line of attack would work better than the one that you’d used on Smithson, who’d rather look at what you could promise than what you’d stop. But Hermione Granger’s been afraid since she was a first year who couldn’t fit into her class or her peers, and she _knows _fear, intimately, and you know that. 

“I’ll need more facts,” she tells you. “Everything so far has been your words, your opinions, your thoughts. I’ll need independent sources.”

You smile at her blandly. “Can I owl you the census data?”

Hermione smiles back, almost unwillingly, before she closes her eyes. “Even if you’re right, I don’t know if I can get Harry and Ron to endorse you.”

“No?” you ask, surprised.

“Ron’s very angry at you.” She frowns. “But then, I'm not sure why.”

“It’s because he doesn’t understand me,” you reply, and feel the smile on your face turn downwards, turn sadder. “We wizards haven’t learned to love things different from us. Or if we have, we’ve forgotten over these decades- this war has made us huddle in our shelters, and those who dared to hold out a hand were the first to die. So we’ve learned to stop, I think.”

Hermione stills, like a tiger in the breath before it explodes into movement. “That would make you brave.”

“I _was _in Gryffindor.”

“I forgot.” She shakes her head. “But it takes courage to stand up and be kind, after everything we’ve been through. Harry knows that. He’ll listen to me.” She nods, once, fast and spearing. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thank you.”

“And, Percy?” She rises, and holds out her hand, so you take it, lifting an eyebrow. “If we’re breaking the barriers down, we’re going to break them _all _down. Sooner or later. Promise me that.”

“I,” you say, puzzled. “What do you mean by all?”

“Werewolves. House elves. Goblins.” Hermione grins at you, a flash of teeth, hair rising around her like a lioness’ mane, eyes brighter than the stars. _“Everyone.”_

You shiver for a moment, thinking about such a world. One where muggleborns matter, yes, but so do centaurs and werewolves; so do house elves; so do goblins. One where old hurts and old wounds are just scars that hinder a movement, that ache at the darkest moments- but don’t hinder _action, _and need not dictate the future of the world.

Your dreams have always been the bravest part of you. This, _this: _you are still scarcely brave enough for this.

But you are.

The song of your ambition rises, a swelling orchestra that thrums in your blood, shining gold and silver. You bend a little and clasp Hermione’s palm, and meet the flame of her gaze with your own glittering promise.

“Yes,” you whisper. _“Everyone.”_


	4. still strove with his last ounce of courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We cannot change the past. We can only look to the future and fight for a better world than we inherited. 
> 
> If you were not fighting for that when you went to your death in the Forbidden Forest, Harry, then what were you fighting for?

“A letter for you, Mr. Weasley,” says the boy that Roger’s hired, holding out something on cardstock. His voice drops to a whisper when you take it and flip it over to see the address. “It’s from _Harry Potter.”_

The spinning of the world ceases for a brief moment. But only that moment. You don’t allow yourself any more weakness; Potter doesn’t deserve that much consideration, even if he holds that position in the country’s politics. And you’re not sure how- or if- you’re going to control your face at the contents of the letter.

“Excuse me,” you murmur, and enter the broom closet that’s been set aside as a personal office for you. 

It’s even worse with all the paperwork strewn over every surface, and the mustiness of the room means you want to breathe through your mouth instead of through your nose. But it has privacy, which is what you need. 

Inside the closet, you raise heavy privacy wards so nobody outside can hear you if you swear or want to break things. Then you lay the letter down and give yourself a break of five heartbeats. Only when that is over- only when you’re calm, and controlled, and steady, do you cut the flap of the letter and peer at the dark green ink.

_Percy,_

_Hermione’s been talking to me for the past week. She says you’re fighting for the voiceless, to give them a voice when they’ve been shut out of one for decades. And yes, that’s a direct quote. T_ _here’s a poem that I read a few weeks ago that I keep thinking of when she talks to me, though. A famous one from the second world war. I’ve penned it below:_

_First they came for the Communists  
And I did not speak out  
Because I was not a Communist  
  
Then they came for the Socialists  
And I did not speak out  
Because I was not a Socialist  
  
Then they came for the trade unionists  
And I did not speak out  
Because I was not a trade unionist  
  
Then they came for the Jews  
And I did not speak out  
Because I was not a Jew  
  
Then they came for me  
And there was no one left  
To speak out for me _

_Just because we defeated Voldemort before he could kill them, too, is it my responsibility to speak out for these people? These people who would have sat and watched me, and my friends, and everyone they knew, too, die? _

_Tell me why I should fight with Ron for these people. Tell me why I shouldn’t despise them._

_If you can, I’ll speak for you. _

_Harry_

Harry Potter hadn’t ever struck you as the kind of person who’d enjoy poetry. But you remember some discussion on the topic in the Burrow that day before it all went downhill, and apparently James Potter had liked poetry. And Potter was curious to see what his father had loved so well.

It isn’t as bad as you might have expected. You remind yourself of that, even as your hope withers in your chest. Potter hasn’t silenced further communications, and he’s kept an open mind, at least according to the words of the letter, and there’s enough bare, uncomfortable truths there that you think he’s using them as proper weapons, honed to silver blades.

_But knives can be double-bladed, and cut him just as well as they cut me. _You swallow against the coldness in your chest. _And if I am not good at telling _him, _who should fear un-elected Ministers more than most, why I am a better proposition than Kingsley- then I am not fit to telling others. _

Hope can die, but you are determined underneath that hope, like the iron beneath a silk glove. Like the roots of a plant, still surviving the coldest winters. So let that hope die, for an easy path, for a quick answer.

You will work for this.

You will have a sweeter, better victory for it.

...

_Harry,_

_I have no defense for the people who would rather have shut their eyes than worked for you, none save for this: they were afraid, and they had more to lose than ever you did yours- a family, or a home, or a good, comfortable life. (There are times when I wonder whether Headmaster Dumbledore might have planned for that.) But it was cowardice. I will not deny that, because I cannot._

_What I deny is that their cowardice makes them undeserving of a say in their government. What I deny is that we can let old griefs and old prejudices rule us when we build a life for ourselves now; for the only thing that will come of that is another Dark Lord, as both Voldemort and Grindelwald formed._

_We cannot change the past. _

_I will give you a quote that an old wizard once wrote, because I believe you might find it pertinent now: “One life can never be matched by another. The most terrible answer to a thousand deaths would be to call for another thousand.”_

_Your ancestor said that, on the eve of the day that the Wizengamot signed the peace treaty between the goblins during the Third Rebellion. There were people then who wanted to kill all the goblins. Others wanted to storm Gringotts. Others wanted reparations for the loss of wizarding life._

_But peace is very different from war, and that is why Kingsley Shacklebolt will never be good for anything other than Interim Minister: peacetime is about making compromises, and fighting, constantly, endlessly to stop the bloodshed. The victories are few and the losses are many. Yes, in the end, nobody wins; but nobody loses either, and that is how peace ought to be. _

_Your ancestor understood that. We cannot change the past. We can only look to the future and fight for a better world than we inherited. _

_If you were not fighting for that when you went to your death in the Forbidden Forest, Harry, then what were you fighting for?_

_I look forward to your answer._

_Percy Weasley_

...

The sun is shining high above you, blazing bright and muggy, and you know it’s brilliant off your hair- your Weasley hair, that calling card you can never abandon. The people around you are staring, eyes bright, expressions yearning.

You let your magic soar out, fierce, and carry your words to the clouds.

...

_There is a world out there that we can build that will shine brighter than ours ever has! It is there, almost in our grasp, and all we must do is reach out, with our courage and our strength, and hold onto it. _

Let us dream!

...

Directly after one of your speeches- they’ve melded into a homogeneous mass in your brain, separated by only distinct flashes of the people: a man with a beard so long he nearly tripped over it; a child waving a pennant with your name and _let us dream _emblazoned on it in shining, ever-changing colors; a group of fifteen wizards chanting a song that will apparently lift you to the heights of your ambitions- you’re in your office, tidying the last set of papers before you can head home.

The windows at the front of the flat shatter. 

Instantly, the cascade of charms you’ve woven around the shop start to flicker, downstream effects building up so the quiescent wards you’d fed every morning with the tiniest portion of your magic growl to your defence. You step twice to the left so the shadows cover your movement if anyone enters, and flick your wand to turn off the light; the lightbulbs shatter instead of just going out, and you have to hold the rest of the magic back through gritted teeth. 

You hadn’t realized how _strong _you’d made it. But you have to wait for whoever enters to enter, because otherwise you’ll slap one of them back and be caught out blind by any of their companions.

You’re lucky, though. Moonlight filters in through the slats of the window, close enough to the door of the room you’re ensconced in. If you’d been blind...

Then someone slams into your office, and it’s only some long buried instinct that keeps you from actually hurting them.

The magic buzzes behind your teeth, aching to be used, and you grind it into submission beneath your heel. You are stronger than this magic; you _are, _you must be, so you will not let it control you.

“Ron,” you say aloud, when you think you can speak without breaking a molar. “What are you _doing?”_

He flushes, wand still raised. In his other hand is a crumpled piece of paper.

“You do not get to treat Harry like this,” he whispers.

“Treat Harry like what?” 

“Like he’s an idiot. Like we’re all idiots, simply because we don’t want to fight for people who-”

“Is that the letter I sent him?” you ask, balking. Reading another person’s correspondence is not so much bad manners as a violation of all norms of privacy. “Ron, what are you doing with that?”

“He read it over my shoulder when he saw the owl,” says a voice from behind Ron. 

Out of the shadows, a dark-robed Harry Potter emerges. He looks, in the dimness, very tired. You bite back the instinctive anger and even more instinctive fear, and stamp down hard on the idea of simply slapping the both of them out of the flat.

“You shouldn’t have allowed that,” you tell him instead, holding grimly onto propriety, more because you can’t think of anything else to _say._ “Mail is _private.”_

“Don’t fucking change the subject.”

“Fine.” You spin to glare at Ron. You’ll never understand them. Merlin, but it’s like dealing with an alien species. “What do you want?”

“You to stop talking like we’re five years old!”

“I’m not talking to you like that.”

“Oh,” sneers Ron, “you’ve never learned to talk in any other way.”

“Then your real problem here is that P- Harry’s talking to me, and not the way I’m talking to him.” You pause. “And that’s something to talk to him about, isn’t it?”

“I want you to shut _up _and go _away. _I want you to stop being so annoying. I'm going to make sure you don’t win, see if I don’t, you lily-livered _slug.”_

“I’ve known you didn’t like me since I was ten,” you tell him levelly. “Believe me, Ron, if you wanted me to care about your opinions, you wouldn’t have spent the past dozen years telling me that everything I did was wrong in your eyes.”

Something shines in his eyes, and you’re almost certain he’ll punch you. “I never hated you before,” he whispers.

_Before _stings, like a pomegranate skin caught under your nails. But your dreams are singing around you, wings taking flight, and you will not let that be grounded by anyone, least of this boy you’ve never managed to understand, for all that you’ve loved him.

“And I told you.” You lean forwards, tilt your chin up. You’ll repeat this over and over again, and hope that the repetition will cause the thorns of the words to soften. “I won’t apologize for being _alive.”_

Harry’s hand clamps down on Ron’s shoulder before he can retort. “Ron,” he says quietly. After a moment, Ron deflates; Harry levels a look at you, pale-faced and stern. “I wanted to know what you meant when you were talking about Dumbledore,” he tells you. “I asked Ron about it- that’s when he saw the letter.”

“Right.” You pause. “Did you not think about asking me that? Instead of breaking into my office?”

Ron’s jaw clenches. “I didn’t-”

“-you broke my windows.”

“Not on purpose.”

“You are _not,”_ you say, folding your arms over your chest, “leaving until you fix them.”

“Alright,” says Harry. You aren’t certain, but you think he’s still holding onto Ron’s arm, tight enough for his fingers to gleam white. “We will. If you tell me why you think Dumbledore planned for me to not- have anything.”

“Not anything,” you caution. “Just... I wouldn’t have been surprised if he wanted you to know loss. To know what it feels to have nothing. To have survived that.”

“That’s bad enough, isn’t it?”

“It is.” 

You eye him, then finally close your eyes and sweep your wand through the movements that lay the wards to sleep again. When you open them, the lights have been restored, and you can see both of them standing in front of your desk: both are now taller than you, hard-faced, war-scarred. 

But you won’t ever be able to erase what it felt to see them at thirteen.

(Your younger brother. The truest thing you’ve ever known: anyone younger than you must always be protected. And you, with your inkstained fingers and measured words, have protected too few for what you’re capable of. But still: your little brother. The youngest brother. How your veins run with guilt when you think of him on the run.)

“Do you remember Sirius Black?”

Harry jerks, a little, at the name, and you fight not to scowl. Ron straightens further. He must remember how much you’d pestered him that summer- how you’d pushed, even though he refused to talk about it at all.

“Yes,” says Harry quietly.

“I went to see you in the Hospital Wing,” you tell him. “Dumbledore told us that you’d had a run-in with Black. So I went to see you.”

“I don’t remember this.”

“You wouldn’t,” you say, looking at Ron. “But I saw you. You were- all three of you- sleeping. Or- at least- you were on the beds. I saw your faces and they weren’t- they weren’t the kind of faces you see on children. On thirteen year olds.”

Ron white-faced with a broken leg, Harry with eyes like pieces of shattered glass, Hermione holding onto both of them with tight, tight hands and an expression like she might never sleep. Sirius Black had done something to them that night. Something Ron refused to talk about. 

But it isn’t that that told you to be frightened.

“And I saw Dumbledore when he was in there.” You look at Harry, and don’t look away. “That was not the face of a man who was worried about children under his care.”

Harry looks uncertain for a moment, before rallying. “If it’s just that, then-”

“It isn’t,” you say. “The Triwizard Tournament. He didn’t even try to stop your participation. There were rituals- are rituals. Things that can break the hold of ancient artifacts. I didn’t know of them then, but I checked in the library before I left. Dumbledore must have known of them, what with his knowledge of alchemy. And after, when the Ministry didn’t believe you...”

“When _you _didn’t believe him.”

“Did you think about why I didn’t?” you ask, voice shortening with impatience. “I’m not such a fool, you know. I didn’t- and don’t- trust Dumbledore. A man who’d send children into the maw of a beast wouldn’t struggle to raise an army of them. I might not have known why he wanted one, but you can’t claim it was impossible for him to think of it!”

“So you decided to join with Fudge,” says Harry dubiously.

“Oh, he was afraid Dumbledore would use the army for his own means- but just because Fudge was wrong about that doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything.”

“Dumbledore never raised an army.”

“No,” you say softly. “He just let you do it for him.”

Harry stills. 

Ron bristles. “It’s all hearsay.”

“Merlin above. Ron. The things you and Harry and Hermione did in Hogwarts were not _acceptable,” _you hiss. “Why else d’you think I asked Mum and Dad to send you and Ginny somewhere else?”

Ron pales a little. “That was you. They said- Beauxbatons-”

“That was me,” you acknowledge. “I wanted you both out of the country. Safe. As-”

“You fucking bastard of a-”

_“Ron,” _says Harry.

Ron whirls to him. “Are you listening to him? He’s admitting to trying to separate us, to keep you alone! To move me and Ginny out! To fucking France!”

“I think,” says Harry slowly, looking at you and then to Ron and then back again, “he was trying to keep you safe. And I think. I think that’s... a good thing. Not a bad one.”

“You cannot mean you’re on his side!”

“I’m glad you were with me,” Harry says. “But we had no idea that you’d be safe back then. That’s what I mean. I don’t think he’s trying to hurt you. Just... keep you safe.”

“Just because I don’t bring home every urchin I meet doesn’t mean I don’t love people,” you say. Ron flushes angrily, yet again, and you sigh. “Let it go, Ron. I’ve answered your questions. Now. Is that all?”

“Yeah,” says Harry, reaching up to dig a hand into Ron’s shoulder. “We’ll be on our way now.”

“After you fix the windows.”

He smiles crookedly, the light flashing off his glasses. “Yeah. After we fix the windows.”

...

(You are sleepless and cracked with it, weeks after Fred died, unmoored. It’s time for dinner and you help your mother set the table. A pot slips a little, slams hard on the wooden table, and you flinch. So does your mother; she follows it up by bursting into sobs. It’s too much; you’re oversensitive to all of the noise, all of the light. Bill and Charlie come to soothe her, and you leave. Go to your room. Lie down.

Hours later, you feel better; less nauseous, enough to sneak downstairs for a something to eat, preferably some of the sourdough your mother had baked that morning that you like so much. You stop on the stairs when you hear voices, and creep down the rest quietly, peering into the dimmed kitchen.

Almost everyone’s there: Bill, head in your mother’s lap, and your father beside him, who’s got George’s feet slung over his thighs, and Charlie, almost spread-eagled on the table, Ron nursing a slice of cake next to him. 

“It isn’t fair,” George is saying, and your father’s carding his fingers through George’s hair; they look relaxed, but there’s something hanging in the air that makes you stay back for a moment longer. “I want him _back,_ you know. I’d give anything to just talk to him.”

“George,” whispers your mother. “Oh, Georgie, I know.”

“And where does _he _get off, d’you know?” George sits up, abruptly, and Charlie straightens in his seat. “Bastard, innit? Always thinking he can do better- he’s always so _condescending. _Didn’t even apologize for not coming back before.”

“You know how he is, though,” drawls Bill. 

“The Ministry was a _very _well paying job,” says Charlie, laughter caught beneath his voice.

It’s an eerily good mimic of you. You suddenly feel nauseated again; is this what they think of you? Is this what-

“I see him,” says George, wearily, after the laughter has died down, “and I see Fred. All the time. Just that explosion. And I think, if Perce were a bit closer- if he hadn’t said that- if- just- what would’ve happened.”

“That’s enough,” says your father, a little sharply, and George shuts up, and _nobody else says anything._

You turn around and return to your room, and you feel something very small and growing in your chest shrivel up like a vine fed acid until the soil boils away. There is something cold and terrible in you, something so furious it takes all your strength not to let it out. You sleep, and you dream, and then you wake up to Charlie poking your face, laughing, the sun shining on his face, and you cannot breathe.

You silence your room, then shatter all the glass in it. You do it so many times that you don’t even have to think about it before long; things just start to explode around you when your brothers have that cast to their faces, when your rage is too much to contain.

They will smile to your face, and sneer at your back, and it does not matter what you do. What you are. You will never be one of them, no matter how much you might wish it. 

You won’t fine penance here.

You walk out that morning. And the next. And the next.

On the sixth day, Luna apparates you to Azkaban.)

...

It isn’t that you hate your family, of course. It isn’t that you don’t love them. 

But you have moved past that, haven’t you?

...

“Weasley,” calls a voice that makes you instinctively- annoyingly- hunch your shoulders. “Wait up!”

Seven years of training don’t quite go away, ever. You turn and squint into the sun as you wait against your better judgment, and in a moment Marcus Flint appears in front of you: a little taller than you, and a lot heavier than he’d been in Hogwarts; he looks like he’s spent the intervening years locked in a gym, and probably eaten some of the iron barbells while he’s at it.

“What d’you want, Flint?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for ages.” He folds his arms over his chest, and they bulge impressively. You do your best to pretend that your pallor’s a response to the bright sunlight. “Look. It’s- er- not quite a short story.”

“What’s it about?”

“You’re running for Minister. I can... it’s about that.”

_Isn’t everything, these days? _

You sigh, though, instead of snapping a retort. 

For one thing, Flint doesn’t actually look like he’ll try to do whatever terrible things you thought him capable of in Hogwarts, and for another, if you’re aiming to be Minister, you can’t exactly let your personal dislikes- schoolboy pettiness- get in the way.

“Right,” you say. “Can you come by tomorrow? Anytime’s fine; I’ll definitely be here.”

Flint’s brow furrows. “I don’t- it’s probably-” he cuts himself off, and looks so miserable that you take pity on him.

“We can do it now, if you don’t mind standing,” you tell him. “The windows got blown in yesterday, and there’s glass all over the upholstery. It’s only that you said it was a long story, so-”

“-there aren’t any pubs around here?” 

“It’s a muggle area,” you say dryly. “And a cheap one at that.”

“Meaning what?”

“That it’ll be worse than the Hog’s Head.” You pause, then add: “On a Sunday morning.”

Flint winces, but the tense slope of his shoulders loosens a little, like he, too, is remembering how crotchety Aberforth could get when hungover. Seventh years are allowed to go to Hogsmeade throughout the weekend, Saturday morning to Sunday evening, and you’d taken full advantage of the Hog’s Head’s cheaper prices sometimes to enjoy a night out from under the professors’ thumbs once or twice. 

...more than once or twice.

Not that Aberforth had minded all that much. Even when you only had enough coin for the firewhiskey and not the room, he’d put you up for the night and then slogged you through the full Sunday after as payment. 

It’d been a learning experience: don’t go anywhere without money, or they’ll scalp you for it.

You’ll be surprised if Flint tells you he hasn’t done the same.

“Nah,” he says. “Nothing’d be worse than that. D’you have time now?”

It surprises you. Enough that your curiosity wins out over your dedication; the glass is going to be there when you return, and the only people who could get glass up their arses would be Davies and a couple of interns. Acceptable losses to find out what Marcus Flint’s been waiting to talk to you about.

“There’s a terrible pub round the corner,” you say. “Let me lock up.”

You lead him to the same place that you’d decided to run with Roger; the grimy seats are empty now, but come evening there’ll be enough people crowding in it to watch whatever sports is on the telly that the entire place feels transformed. You order a plate of fish and chips and gesture for Flint to get a beer; you feel like he’ll need it.

“So. What’s the issue?”

“No issue.” Flint grimaces. “Well. I saw that you’d given the muggleborns a burial. Close to Azkaban. And I wanted-” he breaks off. Then says, even quieter, “I need help.”

You frown. “Help for what?”

“We lost the war,” says Flint plainly. “I know that. _We _know that. But. A lot of people died.”

If it had been said in any other tone, you might have felt offended. You’re already halfway there anyways; you can’t keep from remembering all those corpses laid out in neat lines in Hogwarts’ Great Hall, or the graves you’d dug on the island, or the way the muggleborn neighborhoods you’d visited felt almost-dead, shorn of too many people too quickly, full of anger and fear and defiance. But Flint looks at you like he’s begging you for something, and you don’t know _what._

“I know that,” you say. 

“A fuck of a lot of people in one night.” Flint looks away. “You were there for the Ministry directives, yeah? The one _he _put up?”

“Er. Voldemort?” You lift your brows at his aborted shudder. “Yeah. I remember- something about living up to the potential of our pure blood. Why?”

“A lot of people took it. Um. Seriously. On my side.”

“That... isn’t surprising?”

“They took it _seriously,” _he says, pained. “All of it.”

“I’m not understanding.”

“Look,” says Flint. “They rolled the initiatives out in August, yeah? That was when people were most invested in ‘em, too. And nine months later, they went off and died. There’s a _metric fuckton _of kids rolling around, and I _cannot do it anymore.”_

_“What,” _you say.

Then your brain kicks into gear. 

Voldemort had set up a list of goals for every pureblooded family, for how they ought to comport themselves, for their ultimate goals of life. And foremost among them had been a family. Thing is, you hadn’t thought anyone was taking it seriously. There hadn’t been any discussions about it, at least not in any areas you were in.

But if Flint’s telling the truth-

“How many?” you ask.

“Ten in my care,” he says grimly. “About- twenty more, that I know of.”

“Merlin. And you’re taking care of all of them?”

“A fair few.” Flint hesitates. “I got roped into taking care of my sister when my parents got called to Hogwarts. Then there were house elves coming in, and they were so _fucking_ stupid, because the babies need someone to take care of ‘em, and I went through it because nobody else was showing up for sure, and- fucking hell, I checked, and they’re all orphans. All of ‘em. Their parents, killed at Hogwarts, and now they’re all alone. And I can’t do it alone anymore.”

You’ve never heard him say so many words before. It’s the panic that gets you, though, now; the way Marcus Flint, who’d once broken a Gryffindor Chaser’s collarbone with his bloody beater’s bat, looks like he’s at the end of his rope. 

Because he’s apparently been raising thirty babies, all by himself.

“Right,” you say. “I’ll see what I can do to help- but what help do _you _want? I can put the kids in an orphanage. There should-”

“-there aren’t any,” says Flint. You gape at him, and he nods. “There aren’t. I checked. Or: not good ones. I visited three before I started doing it. They’re fucking _filthy. _I’m not letting those kids grow up there.”

“What about aunts, uncles? Extended family?”

“Nobody’s left. You don’t get it, do you?” Flint leans forwards, face strangely intense. “I’m all that’s left for them.”

You imagine that: all those families wiped out. 

You’ve mourned for your brother, yes, in a way that feels overwhelming; but they’ve had to face so much more loss, on an objective scale; it puts a face to the other side of the war, and it doesn’t matter that they’d made such decisions that they likely deserved to die. Look at the orphans: how can they deserve to live a life without parents or siblings, aunts or uncles or anything apart from thirty other orphans and the poor man who’s been given into their care?

“You spoke to the Ministry?”

Something dark passes over his face, reminds you of who he is; you don’t flinch from it. But you can imagine what was said. The Ministry has made no bones of disliking those from the wrong families; the only thing that’s changed is the definition of _wrong._

“Alright,” you say. “Alright. I think I understand. I... need to talk to some people. I’ll get back to you next week?”

“I,” rumbles Flint, “have heard that before.”

You wince. “Right, but not from me,” you tell him, before Flint can decide to go off on a rampage. “I want to help you- I _will- _but I need to think about what the best way of doing that is. And I can’t just do it on my own.”

"You’re pretty smart,” says Flint.

“The smartest people keep smarter people around, so they don’t have to do thinking.” You dip one of the chips in vinegar and screw up your face when you bite it. The sourness is terrible, but addictive at the same time. “Believe me, I do want to help you. Can’t imagine how tiring it must be.”

“I had to wrangle ten people into babysitting so I could talk to you,” says Flint mournfully. “You know, Weasley, I had a life before this. Used to go out and get smashed every weekend. Now I can’t even have a fucking night’s sleep.”

“It’ll be some time before I can do anything,” you warn. “And I can only do anything if I win. Which isn’t a guarantee.”

Flint looks at you like you’re an idiot. “Weasley,” he says, “I’m taking care of- Merlin- thirty pureblood kids. I’m their guardian. Officially.” He snorts when you just shake your head at him. “Mate, I’ve got, like, fourteen proxy votes in hand.” He laughs at your expression, and it looks like years have fallen off his face. “You help me out, then you’ll help out a bunch of others, too. You get this done- properly, yeah?- and you’ll get yourself into the Minister’s office.”

...

For every campaign, there is luck. It seems that you are undergoing quite the windfall of it now.

...

_When’s your next speech?_

...

_Wednesday. It’s at a park in a muggleborn-neighborhood. It might be easier for you to floo to this location instead of apparating, if you’re planning on coming._

...

It’s not quite raining, but the promise is there, when Harry Potter turns up to your rally for the very first time. You recognize the dark green cloak he’s wearing, though he’s using Polyjuice and the face beneath isn’t one you know, and he doesn’t ask any questions or stay for very long after the speech is over. Later, as you’re going through the written letters that Roger had collected from the people, you pause at one with strangely familiar handwriting, though there’s no signature.

_I thought about what you said. We’re trying for children now, and I don’t know if I’d want them to go to Hogwarts when they grow up. Not after what happened there. I’m sure Ginny won’t hear of anything else, but I’m not so certain now, with all that’s happened. And that’s after a war. _

_During a war? At the beginning of one? _

_I can’t imagine it._

_I’m also going to say this because I don’t think Ron ever will: thank you, for trying to get him out. I’d rather have him miserable and alive than besides me and dead. _

_And you’re right; peace is very different from war. I can see why Fudge didn’t want to believe the war was starting again. Once you get used to a quiet life, it’s damn difficult adjusting back. That’s all I want, Percy. A peaceful, normal life. That’s all I’ve ever wanted._

_But when we spoke, I realized- you don’t want to do this either. You’re just more afraid of what happens of the consequences if nobody does it. And yeah, that’s worth fighting a couple people in the family, I think._

_That is why I walked into the forest to meet Voldemort, Percy. Nothing more. It’s also why I’ll endorse you to the _Prophet _tomorrow morning._

You close your eyes and swallow, hard, against the curls of hope wending up your throat. Then you take a parchment and write:

_Nothing more, perhaps. But also: nothing less._

_Thank you._

And let the owl fly out, dark-winged against the cloudy sky, and don’t even mind the rain starting to drip onto the parchments surrounding you, dampening your collar, wicking your shirt to your skin.

...

In any victory, you need luck. In any campaign, you need people to _want _you to win. Sometimes, impossibly, all the pieces you’ve bargained fall in your favor. Your family believes you to be the stodgy one, the one that never takes a risk; you certainly don’t, not like Bill and his curses, not like Charlie and his dragons, not like the twins and their pranks, not like Ron and his loyalty to stupid people, not like Ginny and her damned tongue that won’t stay quiet.

You don’t know how to put it into words: because you had bet your life by staying with the Ministry, and pulled away only when it was safe to do so. You have always done this; you have always laid out the highest stakes, the biggest dreams, and even when they burned because of others’ disdain and contempt, you’d not let your palm close or your dreams fade.

You have decided to bargain your family, your life, your pride, your career, all for this nebulous, fracturing idea. 

You have bargained, and you are, now, on the cusp of coming up trumps.

...

They crowd into your flat, all of them, two days later- Hermione and Harry, Luna and Penelope and Roger and what seems like half a hundred others. They bring snacks and drinks; you refuse to provide plates on account that they’ll chip them and you’ve gotten the _expensive _china, the ones that apparently enhance taste under the correct set of charms; somebody sets out music, a reedy flute rendition of Celestina Warbeck’s _Love’s a Fragile Bird, _and Harry point blank refuses to work with that, so Hermione changes the radio to a muggle one.

The music that comes out is strange. You roll your eyes when Penelope starts humming it, and before Luna can take over, you hand out the packets you’ve compiled.

“Homework,” says Harry, looking daunted.

You grin at him, with more teeth than is likely necessary. “Policy positions,” you say. “These aren’t essays that’ll be marked for a grade, Potter, these are going to become _law.”_

“Lovely,” says Harry sourly, but takes his papers without any further hesitance.

“Every packet’s on a different topic,” you explain to them all. “And has a number of positions, and data. Issues I’ve spoken to with people- on the road- are highlighted in green. Data points from the pre-Voldemort era are blue, post-Voldemort’s yellow. Think up what you feel, and why, and what’s important and not. Back it up.”

“What kind of topics?” asks someone from the back that you can’t quite see. 

“Everything I could think of,” you tell them honestly. “Werewolf rights. Creature rights. Muggleborn rights; pureblood rights. War-time crimes. Tariffs for entry. Tariffs for exports. Safety measures. Education. Orphanages. Budgets. _Everything.”_

As you speak, you put up the topic on the wall in front of you in a line of neat black. 

“You each get half an hour with the packet, then rotate. There’s more of you than packets, so get sharing. I want essays _Snape _would be proud of.”

There’s a barely audible mutter, almost rebellious, and you grin at them as you back into the kitchen.

“Oi!” calls Roger, equal parts indignant and laughing. “Where d’you think you’re going?”

“I’ve seen it all,” you retort. “And you lot are going to need someone to make the tea, yeah?”

“None of us think you’re a grand host, Perce,” hollers Penelope.

“It’s not to taste good,” you say, and grin at Penelope, easy for what feels the first time in an age. “It’s so all of you have something in your hands and can’t draw your wands.”

Someone laughs, calling you a coward. You retreat into the kitchen and make the tea, and keep an ear out. 

It takes five minutes. 

There’s an explosion of sound, and then someone’s shouting, and you walk in to see Penelope saying something very loudly into the face of a girl with shiny black hair who looks about her age- someone you vaguely remember as a Ravenclaw- about freedom of entry. 

They’re both terrifyingly smart, and- apparently- graduates of Hogwarts’ debate team. You hand out the tea and cup your chin in your hands, and listen intently.

This is why you wanted them to come. 

This is what you _want: _anger, and surety, and the strength that comes from plans that are battle-scarred long before unveiled to the public. 

...

(For too long has it been acquiescence or disdain. 

Albus Dumbledore led with a firm hand, because his hand was forged in wartime, and he was a hero, phoenix-friend, Dark Lord-slayer. Kingsley aims to become the same. Or if not to the same extent, too close for comfort.

You will listen to the views, and you will come up with _your _answer.

This is the truth: your ambition is not simply to make your mark on the Wizarding World.

Your ambition is to teach the Wizarding World to _think. _

Yes. It will be as hard as it sounds. 

But you- aspen-chosen, unicorn-chosen; steady revolutionary, vicious brother; unfaithful son; loyal son: you believe, in the deepest core of you, in the core of the heart, as the iron at the heart of a star, that you can.)

...

Hermione’s loudly debating the development of the orphanages with Gretchen Hastings, a halfblooded witch from Somerset, when the doorbell rings. You frown inwardly, wondering who it could be; you hadn’t expected even this many people to show up, and you can’t think of who’s missing.

“I’ll get it,” says Harry, pressing you down into your chair with a heavy hand. 

You turn, a little, more curious now than anything- Harry doesn’t act like this in other’s homes, that much you’re certain. Then he steps away from the door to let the person enter.

Not person. People.

Ginny and Ron enter the apartment, Ginny’s hand clamped tight on Ron’s arm, both looking determinedly awkward in a fashion that makes the hair prickle on your arm. Even the vestiges of the conversations fade away, replaced with absolute silence, because apparently everyone knows about the- issues- you’re having with your family.

“Hey,” says Ron.

Slowly, you lever yourself upright, so you’re standing and meeting them on an equal level. “Hello,” you say.

“Percy,” says Ginny. “It’s- er- been a while.”

“Has it,” you say. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Penelope shoves you, in the spot on your back that always spasms at a touch. You hiss through your teeth and she whispers, “Don’t be an arse, Percy.”

You sigh. Rake your fingers through your hair. Find some measure of calm.

“Right,” you say. “Why’re you here, then?”

“Harry told me to come,” says Ginny, voice measured like she’d actually used scales to ensure the syllables had no inflection. “He said- well. He said a lot of things.” She bites her lip. “I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.”

“Fuss,” you say flatly.

She blinks. “Um. No?”

“Well, it is a fuss,” says Ron. He yanks his arm away from Ginny, then looks at you, sharp as an owl’s claws. “A few months ago, everything this lot were doing would be considered mad. More than mad. Like thinking Merlin’s going to reincarnate sometime soon. Crackpot theories. And now half the people we know are involved in this.” He lifts his chin, but doesn’t look away from you. “And we wanted to know why.”

“Yes, Merlin forbid you actually apologize to me before stepping into my flat,” you say, and fold your arms over your chest.

But to your surprise, Ron flushes. And not angrily. “I’m- look, is there somewhere else we can talk? About this? Without... everyone hearing about it?”

“Come on, then,” you say, and stride into the kitchen, throw up a _muffliato _and don’t let your expression lighten one bit.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I was wrong. You- I shouldn’t have spoken like that to you.”

“What made you change your mind?” you ask, folding your arms over your chest.

“Harry,” says Ron, plainly, without embellishment. He’s telling the truth, the ugly, unvarnished whole of it; you can see it in the way his body pitches forwards, a little, bent on convincing you. “I- hadn’t thought about how it looked from the outside before.”

“And now that you have?”

“I don’t think that you were right,” he says. “But I can understand that you didn’t just- hate me for no reason, either.”

You snort, feeling the muscles in your back and neck loosen almost against your will. “Is that what you thought I felt all these years?” You wave away Ron’s response. “Little matter. Fine. I accept your apology.”

You turn to leave, but Ron seizes your shoulder.

“About the other thing,” he says, uncomfortably earnest. You frown at him, and he grimaces, but forges on. “What you said in the Burrow.”

“We aren’t talking about that right now,” you reply. 

Mostly because you can’t bear it, not when the only privacy you have is a paltry spell and there’s fifty others on the other side, waiting for some gossip to spill to others’ lips. And because you have given enough of yourself, bared enough scars, to your family’s desire for penitence.

“I just- you should know,” says Ron. “We- none of us- think that way. Want anything like that. Would exchange-”

“-me for Fred,” you say, flat as a knife’s blade. Ron flinches, a little, and you bare your teeth in a parody of a smile. _Okay _is what wants to come out. Just that word will save you this entire conversation. Instead, you hear, to your own horror: “I don’t believe you.”

Ron pales. “It’s the truth.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t lie to my face,” you say, and the words are sour on your tongue, like the aftertaste of vomit. “You’re here for Harry and Hermione; you’re here because you think there’s interesting stuff happening in the campaign. And that’s fine. You’re my brother. I’ll always love you. But let’s not pretend to some grand affection that we haven’t ever had before.”

“I’m not pretending anything!”

“And I _told _you,” you say, pulling away, “I don’t believe you. Harry told you that I didn’t want to actively ruin your life- _congratulations, _Ron, really, that you needed someone’s help to realize that, I didn’t realize you were that thick- so, I’m guessing, Hermione told you that it was wrong to want one brother dead for another?” 

Ron doesn’t reply, but you can read it on his face. The laughter that comes from your chest _hurts, _like a piece of glass being grounded into your lungs.

“Go to hell,” you say. “And _get out of my house.”_

“See, Percy, this is why people don’t like you,” snaps Ron. “I’m trying. I came all the way here. What’s it matter who got me to see reason?”

"Because it’s wrong!” you shout. Ron backs away rapidly at the look on your face, tripping over his own feet, but you cannot stop now. “Because I’ve loved you as best I knew how, Ron, and it’s never been enough for you, and you don’t get to act like those- those _fucking _scraps you’re throwing me now are enough! I refuse to accept it! I am your brother, and it is past time that you understood that! All of you!”

“I just-”

You advance, backing him further into the kitchen. “I have never cared whether you liked me,” you hiss, “but I heard you in that kitchen, and there’s things that you can’t ever unhear. You wanted that, Ron, don’t you dare lie to me about it. Whatever pretty words you want me to accept aren’t _good enough, _goddammit.”

He looks up at you, because even though he’s older than before, even though you thought him taller than you, he isn’t; not in reality. He isn’t shorter than you by more than a few inches, but enough that you have to look down on Ron’s face, and he up to yours.

“Percy,” he says, very quietly.

“You want my forgiveness,” you say, “you really, truly want it? Then you’ll _do _something. Just like you _did _something then.

“Until then, I want you _out of my home.”_

...

_I am as I am, _you write that night, after everyone’s gone home and the only things left are scraps of paper like white birds on your couch. _I do not need your forgiveness, for all that I’d wanted it once. I am as I am, as I have always been. _

_Accept that, or don’t. _

_But understand this: you won’t have me unless you accept me as well._

...

You post it to your parents, hands shaking.

...

It takes you another day to finally read through all the policy proposals that the people have written for you. You put off the ones for the orphanages before you can’t find an excuse to do it any longer. It’s finally evening by the time you get the parchments together.

There’s a total of four proposals, overall; the rest are just agreeing with one or the other. 

One discusses the difficulty of finding someone suitable- it _will _be difficult, to be fair; thirty children, impressionable children, and their caretaker will bear that burden on their shoulders. They are the children of Death Eaters and purebloods dead for Voldemort’s cause, but is it truly fair to raise them away from their traditions- not of bigotry, but of _magic-_ or is it right to expose them to people who might inoculate them to prejudice from a young age? Anyone you choose will be scrutinized unfairly. They want you to set up a committee for identifying the person who’s essentially overseeing the entire process. _And _they’ve drawn up a list of likely characteristics in the person chosen.

You snort reading them out: a muggleborn; a person who supported the right side of the war; a parent of at least three children; ties to Hogwarts.

A second proposal wants you to leave the bulk of the responsibility of the orphanages to Flint. The babies’ parents left them to him; it’s his decision. It recommends a fund of a few hundred galleons, set up as for orphans by the Ministry. Nothing much else. It, rather unsurprisingly, seems to have the majority of support: it requires the bare minimum of effort required to solve Flint’s problems, and is probably what Flints wants himself.

A third strongly- _strongly- _talks about sending those kids to the existing orphanages. They aren’t terrible, after all; kids from there get their Hogwarts’ fees waived, and that’s the great leveller.

It’s the fourth one that intrigues you.

You recognize Hermione’s writing, and- it talks, in surprisingly evocative terms, of all the muggleborns that have been left parentless as well over the past year. Muggleborns brought into the magical world years earlier than they could ever attend Hogwarts by Death Eaters that wanted to kill them, who’ll have their memories wiped as soon as not. 

_Not Voldemorts in the making, _writes Hermione, _but Tom Riddles: ruined by the Wizarding World, loathed by all, loved by none. It is not for fear that they will turn evil that we should save them, but rather love- for they are children, as we all were, once, and we owe it to them to have a better life than ever we did. That love that we all bear to those children of misfortune, orphaned because of our mistakes and our failings. That love we bear to those that can be our penance, if we have courage enough to admit that is what they are._

It would be easy- far too easy- to adopt the easiest method. To get what you want, and never think about anyone else. The second proposal is alluring in your mind’s eye, a siren song.

But when your professors asked for three feet, you gave them five. When Crouch took you in, you rose to become the Minister’s secretary. When Ministry hours ended at five, you stayed until ten. When burying muggleborns, you made them wands and gave them sunlight.

You are many things. You are afraid of many things. 

Hard work is not one of them.

You sharpen your quill, dip it in fresh ink, and start writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyyyy
> 
> Right!! So a couple things:  
1\. Harry quotes _THE_ famous poem that's defo overused, but it's overused for a _reason_ and I'll die on that hill. Truly. One of the most evocative poems abt standing up for what you believe in ever out there.  
2\. Like, "let us dream" isn't used for campaign slogans bc it's too... unsure rather than decisive, but it SHOULDN'T be. Y'all can see all my political peeves glittering out here, l m a o  
3\. WE GET TO SEE BACKROOM POLITICKING YAY  
4\. Percy basically builds a thinktank of people that comprises of the entirety of the DA, the young people of the Ministry and people he personally likes. If you don't think this is going to build the most reasonable-sounding progressive positions in history, GTFO pls k thx  
5\. Percy loves his family, but he doesn't understand them and they don't understand him, and it's vv painful for everyone involved.  
6\. Ron might find Percy annoying, but Harry thinks of him as "gosh such a caring brother" in the same way we think of the grandparents of our friends as vv nice people  
7\. Percy being friends with Aberforth's a great headcanon, what do you mean it's ooc as fuck?


	5. to reach the unreachable stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” echoes George. “So. I’m- you heard what I said, didn’t you?”
> 
> “Yes.”
> 
> “I meant it.”
> 
> “That,” you tell him, “does not surprise me.”

“Ron says-”

“I don’t have time,” you interrupt.

Bill forges on, and you make the executive decision to ignore him in favor of locking up your apartment properly. It’s only when you turn around, mentally rehearsing exactly what you need to say and in what order, that you realize that Bill’s still there, and so is Charlie.

“Look, Percy,” says Bill. “We just- we heard that-”

“I’m sure it’s important and momentous,” you tell him briskly. “But I  _ cannot.  _ I have work to do right now; and I do not have time for this. Believe me.”

_ “Percy-” _

“When can we meet you, then?” asks Charlie, driving a strong elbow into Bill’s side. 

You blink. “Tonight,” you say. 

If your gamble sticks through, you’ll have the race sewn up. If it doesn’t, you’ll have signed your death warrant. 

(You aren’t under any illusions: if you lose, then Kingsley will not be kind to you. You will be lucky to escape St. Mungo’s. You will be lucky to avoid his smear campaign in the Merlin-damned Arctic, much less any part of Britain.)

Either way, you’ll have time to talk to them.

“Right,” says Charlie. “We’ll see you at the Leaky? Eight?”

You make a vaguely affirmative sound, and apparate away. You cannot let their words affect you; you cannot let any of you be less than fully focused on the meeting to come.

...

“Flint,” you say grimly.

“Weasley.” He nods to you. “Your answer?”

“It’s complicated,” you tell him. Flint’s face changes, turns harder; you shake your head. “Hear me out. You owe me that much.”

You settle into a seat, plush and far better than the pub you’d met him in a week earlier. But the truth of it is that you aren’t less comfortable here than in that dingy pub. You are certain that your animagus, if ever you get around to studying it, will be a chameleon.

“Well?”

“A lot of people died in the war,” you say carefully. “Hundreds of Death Eaters- hundreds of those on the other side too. I checked the records and- there’s a lot of orphans. On both sides.”

“Weasley-”

“Any system I set up for the orphanages wouldn’t differentiate between purebloods and muggleborns.”

“These are my  _ family,”  _ says Flint. “You’d- what, raise them with mud-”

“-think very, very carefully about how you’re going to end that sentence.”

“You worked in that Ministry!”

“And I watched that Ministry kill my brother,” you tell him, deathly quiet.

Flint eyes you disgustedly. “Should’ve known you’d be a useless grass.”

Calm. Calm. It is of utmost importance that you don’t get angry or panic. The only thing holding this meeting together is you; it is you that stands to lose a hell of a lot if it doesn’t go through.

“D’you want to know about the rest of my policy proposal?”

“I want some fucking  _ help,”  _ hisses Flint.

“And you’ll get it,” you reply. “If you're willing to compromise.”

“I’m telling you I’ll make you the fucking Minister of Magic, and you want a compromise?” Flint snorts. “You know how these deals work, Weasley.”

Calm.

“I'm working for a better world. A fairer one. This undermines the entirety of that platform.”

“They’re kids! You stand for tradition, too, don’t you?”

Calm.

“Not when that tradition is wrong.”

“Who made you in charge of deciding what’s wrong?”

Calm.

“I fought in the Battle of Hogwarts because I was wrong not to fight back before,” you say. “I know why I fought there, and what I was fighting for. And I will not compromise on those values simply because it would make your ancestors happier.”

Flint’s face turns colder. “It isn’t about values,” he says lowly. “It’s about reality. You need the votes. I need the orphanages. You need me, Weasley.”

The slender thread holding your voice steady and  _ calm _ snaps.

“I,” you bite out, rising to your full height, “will _not_ be held hostage by _anyone,_ _Flint. _Tell that to your people. Get it through your skull. I am a Weasley and I am running for Minister and if I win it I will not do it because I agreed to give government galleons to your family to raise the next generation of Death Eaters.”

“How  _ dare-” _

“I might need you,” you tell him. “But you need me, too. I can survive not becoming Minister.” You probably won’t, but Flint doesn’t know that. “Can you survive without my help?” Flint, white with anger, opens his mouth and closes it, speechless. You turn away. “Think on it,” you say, and leave the restaurant.

...

You’re shaking and disgusted when you finally let yourself calm down.

Disgusted at yourself, disgusted at Flint, disgusted at what’s coming on the horizon. If you lose- oh, Merlin, the repercussions! The darkness festering on the edges of your world: it will stay, and grow, and it will take another sacrifice of a little child and their innocence to beat back for a few paltry papers. You think that, more than anything else, sickens you. What kind of a world thinks of its children as expendable?

_ Not mine,  _ you think, and force your heartbeat to slow with heavy, deep breaths.  _ Not mine, and not any world that I live in. _

You apparated to some cliffs, and not home; the air is cool, washing against your face, and the sunset is glorious. Slowly, you drop backwards, and dangle your feet off the edge of the cliff, wand still in your palm and head pillowed on damp grass. 

But what can you do? What bargains can you make and still keep your soul?

Is it worth it, your soul, when measured against the balance of another child?

You don’t weep, but you want to. You don’t scream either, but you want to. 

…

“Bill,” you say. “Charlie.”

“Hey, Perce.” Charlie grins up at you before his face goes somber and a little worried. “You look… not so great. Everything okay?”

“Surviving,” you reply dryly, seating yourself. “As always.”

_ “Percy,” _ says Bill.

You sigh. “What did you want?”

“Who was the meeting with?” asks Charlie.

“Marcus Flint,” you say flatly.

Bill’s face sharpens. “Of the Death Eaters?”

“Formerly of the Death Eaters.”

“He’s not good news,” says Charlie slowly. “Perce, if you’re-”

“-why were you speaking to him?” asks Bill, very obviously kicking Charlie into silence under the table.

You let yourself smile thinly. “I wanted him to get me some votes.”

“That doesn’t seem like a… particularly good decision.”

“I,” you say through a clenched jaw, “can handle myself.”

“Right,” says Bill. “Okay then.” He pauses, and looks at Charlie, then back at you, in that very strange, intimate manner that he has, all understanding and unyielding and incisive. “We aren’t actually here to talk to you about that.”

“Ginny told us what you said,” says Charlie bluntly.

You blink at both of them, then lean back to signal for a drink to the waitress: you’re clearly going to need it. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to Ginny since- Hogwarts.”

Which is longer than you usually like to leave it, that’s true enough; but the situation hasn’t exactly been a normal one either. Your relationship with Ginny’s always been one of the best of your relationships in the family- far better than the twins and Ron, at least- and you do regret it now, the quiet distance that’s been opened between the two of you over the past years. 

Still. Not enough to wade back into the morass of your family’s issues.

“Not to her,” says Charlie. “To Ron.”

“Oh.” The beer comes, foaming and sticky with condensation, and you run a finger over the dampness; avoid looking at the others. “That.”

“You want us to do something,” says Bill gently. “But- Perce. We just… don’t understand. Or  _ get  _ what we can do.”

“So this is us asking,” finishes Charlie. 

You swallow. Study the both of them. Think about what you want, but your brain feels like it’s gone blank: all that you can remember is the way the wind and waves had lashed the cliffs before you apparated here, smoothing the jagged stone until the earth crashed apart, revealing rough stone once more. 

“Have you seen the island?” you ask abruptly. “The one near Azkaban?”

Bill and Charlie exchange a look. 

“No,” says Bill.

“Let’s go see it,” you say, and stand up, turn around and make your way out of the pub. 

You can hear them scrambling after you, but you don’t pause until you’re outside, and breathing in the cold, fresh air. When they finally emerge, you grip Bill’s sleeve and wait until he has a proper hold on Charlie before apparating away.

The wind is even sharper here. You can see Charlie shivering, and you take some pity on him- throw him your cloak. Shrug off the questioning look he sends to you. You run hot, and, anyways: you’re used to this kind of weather by now. The sparse shrubs of heather and lavender are dried out to husks; the only real smell to the place is salt and  _ cold,  _ so cold it has its own scent. But the sun still shines down on the graves you’d dug, incongruously bright even if it isn’t warm.

“Percy,” says Charlie. “You- it’s- it’s beautiful.” His hand brushes over the bare branches of a heather brush, unerringly picking out a bloom, but he’s looking up at the sky. “You made this happen?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Me and Luna.”

“Why?”

“Because someone had to.”

“We thought you were- working. With the Ministry. With Kingsley. When you kept leaving home.”

“I would rather throw myself off a cliff than walk back there,” you say grimly.

Bill pauses. “But you’re running for Minister.”

“Yeah,” you say, and laugh, bitter and cracked through, like a lime rind gone hard and sour. “Someone has to.”

…

Here is the thing: the Wizengamot is made up of three hundred and four individuals, and though you have bypassed the nomination vote, there is no way for you to avoid the recommendation vote. The general population determines the next Minister of Magic, yes, but the Wizengamot gets to recommend who they think will be the best Minister. 

Nobody has ever become Minister without winning the recommendation vote. It’s the one confounding factor that  _ everyone  _ listens to, in the brief times when people have gotten a nomination by hook or crook.

(And here you are, bare-boned and mouth full of fangs. Here you are, Percy Weasley, lashing out with bone and tooth and venom to those who wish to help you: vicious and wounded and hopeless beyond all measure.)

…

You rip out of bed. Wrap yourself in notice-me-not charms and go for a walk through Diagon. Sleep won’t come anyways; maybe some time spent walking will change things. 

Outside, it isn’t raining, though it’s clearly just finished and is threatening to do so again sometime soon. You tread lightly, wand in your palm, fingers curled over the handle. It feels like some sort of a betrayal: aspen and unicorn hair, all the promise of your blood and soul and brain erased into dust. All the hard work. All the hope.  _ Let us dream,  _ you’d sung, but how many dreams will you shatter tomorrow?  _ Let us dream,  _ but not too much: not too fast.  _ Let us dream,  _ but oh,  _ oh:  _ how fragile is a dream?

How long shall it take for these people to dream again if you lose?

You’ve signed your own death warrant, as you feared. Worse: you’ve signed away your country’s future.

…

But if you are to lose, you will not do it by hiding your face, no matter how much you might wish to. Instead, you get dressed in your finest robes- midnight blue, with understated silver accents- and press your wand into the holster at your waist, slip into your properly well-worn shoes. Then you take a deep breath and walk into green fire, nausea churning in your belly.

The Ministry is quiet. The courtroom where the Wizengamot is gathered is not; it’s crowded up to the rafters, and even further. You’re almost immediately accosted by a panting Roger Davies, who grabs onto your bicep.

“Did you get it?” he demands.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” you tell him, and then dislodge his grip from your arm very, very gently. Whatever Roger sees in your face, it frightens him; he turns white, and stumbles backwards. You reach out to brace him and say, lowly, “Set up the interview with Ms. Smithson in the Hog’s Head as soon as the results are called- I’ll apparate out there. And Roger?”

He swallows, hard, still look terrified. “Yeah?”

“I want everyone in the office on a media black-out for the next two days. Take the weekend. We all deserve some rest.”

_ We’re going to lose.  _

You can read the sentiment in Roger’s eyes. But you cannot say it out loud, and you will not: so this is the closest any of you can come. To listen to the news on the radio, and hide in the privacy of your homes, and mourn what could have been for two days before returning to work with the same old determination. 

“You’re sure?” he asks.

Your mouth is not dry. Your eyes are level. Your hands do not shake. 

“Yes,” you say. “I’m sure. Take a break, Roger.”

You release him, then go up the dais to where you and Kingsley need to sit while the votes are being cast. There are two chairs placed there, rough-hewn wood; you don’t bother casting cushioning charms before sitting down, though Kingsley- you can’t help but note- does. There’s a deafening aura of confidence about him: not smugness, which might have at least made you angry, but rather just the sheer assurance that he will win. 

To calm yourself down, you run down the tally of the Wizengamot. 

Eighty-nine votes are to the hard-line pureblood faction, of which Flint holds sixteen: fourteen proxy, and the Flint and Noxberry seats from his parents. Another seventy-two votes are to the progressive pureblood faction, which tends to vote along traditional lines even if they aren’t quite so extreme as the hard-liners. There are fifty-two votes that come from muggleborns. There are another sixty-five votes that tend to ally with the muggleborn vote and keep the older faction of the Wizengamot in- supposed- check. And the last twenty-six votes are the truly independent votes of the entire body; they don’t ally with anyone at all, voting differentially based on whatever topic comes up.

You know all of this. 

There are splits even down this, of course; the votes that will join with Harry Potter no matter what, the votes that will refuse to follow him no matter what, the votes that will go with the Weasleys, the votes that will refuse to follow you because of your age, the votes that will refuse to go to Kingsley because of his auror background-

You know all of this.

Without Flint, the number of votes you will get will be too few. 

You know all of this, too.

“Thank you,” Kingsley murmurs to you. “You were right: a Minister must be elected. We need the legitimacy of this election.”

One hundred and fifty-three votes to win, if everyone votes.

Even with Harry’s recommendation, even with the younger muggleborn vote: you need some of Flint’s people. You need help, and you don’t have it. You are alone, here, child of traitors, traitor-child. If you bled on these robes, nobody would notice.

“We begin today with the recommendation vote for Minister of Magic, to be sworn in on the summer solstice of the year 1997,” intones one of the judges. “Two candidates have stood for this office. Shall someone nominate them?”

Eleanor Biddeley, a witch of both impeccable breeding and much intelligence- she’d expanded her father’s business empire by creating her own anti-hairfall potions- stands for Kingsley. You wait, and your hands ache so much with the desire to let them curl into fists but you don’t let it happen. It’s Ollivander that stands for your own nomination.

Once the formalities are over, the tedious process of calling the roll begins. 

Percy keeps a mental count. There’s a number of abstentions, but that’s to be expected; there isn’t a candidate that’s running on anything that would interest the traditionalists. Your own platform is one of change and growth; Kingsley’s platform might be more favorable to them, but his history works against him in this case. Some of the more progressive people also abstain: they don’t mind which one of you gets office, and would rather not make an enemy if they choose wrong.

Harry’s vote for you causes a minor fracas among some people of the wand-happy progressives; you keep your face as calm as you can manage, but cheer internally as you actually get a good quarter of aurors- ostensibly Kingsley’s strongest faction- to vote for you. And then- and then-

“Arthur Weasley,” says the judge calmly, and you forget yourself enough to jerk,  _ hard,  _ in your seat, head snapping up to stare at your father.

Your father, who will not look at you.

_ No,  _ you think desperately.  _ No, please, please, not like this, not like  _ this- 

“The vote of House Weasley goes to Acting Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt,” he says. 

His eyes meet yours. Hold. There is something like an apology on his face, if you go looking for it- but you don’t want to. You really,  _ really  _ don’t want to. Not now, not after your father has destroyed your dreams with eleven words. 

Eleven words. 

Merlin above. 

You hadn’t expected much from them, really, but this is not  _ much,  _ is it, to hope for an abstention from a father that has always hated any sign of success on your part? How dare he. How dare he! You would have taken silence, you would have taken  _ absence,  _ but no: that is not enough for Arthur Weasley, is it? He just wants to shatter your dreams into as many pieces as there are coins in his vaults.

But before you can get up and flee, before you forget yourself enough to get up and curse him into a piece of quivering jelly, your mother is at the counter.

You blink. Try to think. Try to breathe.

“Molly Weasley.”

“The Order of Merlin Holder, Molly Weasley, votes for Percy Weasley,” she announces.

Silence ripples across the hall. You blink. Try to breathe. 

What does that make it- it’s- it’s ninety abstentions, and seventeen absences, and ninety-nine votes for Kingsley and ninety- _ six  _ votes for you, and there’s only two- three- more people- and- and you have a  _ chance,  _ still, and-

Behind your mother, you can see Charlie whispering furiously into Ron’s ear. You wait, sick with tension, as Bill comes up to the podium. As his eyes catch yours, hold; as he nods, reassuring, and votes for you. Then it’s Ron’s turn. He doesn’t look at you, but he doesn’t look at Kingsley either: just keeps his eyes fixed on the judge, knuckles white on the wood of the podium, and then-

-abstains.

_ Abstains. _

_ What the fuck,  _ you think, quite hysterically, before you force yourself to let go of the bruising grip on your own elbow. 

That’s it, then, isn’t it? There’s no way out of this. You can see the way Kingsley is smiling, just that inch more relaxed than he would be otherwise. Even if Ginny votes for you, you will end up at ninety-eight votes. Broken by one. Broken by the slenderest of margins.

Ginny is at the podium, is opening her mouth to answer the judge, is looking at you with both pity and kindness.

And then, out of absolutely nowhere, the doors fling open.

There is a person there, wearing an absolutely sodden set of robes. They stomp inside, and it takes you a minute for the specter of Marcus Flint to resolve out of the camera flashes. His dark hair shines under the combined weight of the entire Wizengamot, and though he is a large man, he does not loom quite so much right now.

“I know I’m late,” he says gruffly. 

_ “Very  _ late,” says the judge.

“Too many kids at home,” Flint replies. “Now, d’you call my name, or…”

“Let the Holder of the Order of Merlin, Ginevra Weasley, cast her vote. You shall be given a chance immediately after.” The judge lifts an eyebrow. “A drying charm would not go amiss, Lord Flint.”

Flint folds his arms over his very, very broad chest, and does not move.

Seemingly giving him up for a lost cause, the judge turns back to Ginny, who lifts her chin, and says, clearly, “The Order of Merlin Holder, Ginevra Weasley, votes for Percy Weasley.”

“Very well,” says the judge. “Lord Flint, you may approach the podium. As Proxy for House Allestryce, how do you vote?”

“I abstain,” says Flint, leaning forward and smiling up at the judge with his stupid, stupid teeth.

So this is what it has come down to. He will hang you out to dry, this man, all for the insults you spat at him the day before; and you cannot even claim it unwarranted. This is Flint’s vengeance: public and humiliating and very Slytherin. You bite your tongue until it bleeds, and breathe out. 

This, at least, you know. 

And though the actual vagaries of humiliation never get better, you know better what to expect now; your stomach twists, but you don’t flush bright red as your siblings do, and you can even manage a wry smile. A sardonic tip of your hat to Flint: you hadn’t thought him the type for this kind of bloodless vengeance, but he’s executed it magnificently. And with the press clamoring over him for the drama, he might even be able to wheedle some money out of some rich hands and get those homes set up for the orphans. A part of you almost admires it.

“As Proxy for House Burke, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Compton, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Everett, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Fondel, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Leafstone, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Levering, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Mint, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Perspipace, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Selwyn, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Umbridge, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Whitmore, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Whick, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Proxy for House Yaxley, how do you vote?”

“I abstain.”

“As Head of House Flint, how do you vote?”

“The House of Flint,” says Marcus Flint, face splitting into a slow grin, pleased as a cat with a mouse trapped between its teeth, “votes for Percy  _ fucking _ Weasley, Your Honor.”

_ Oh,  _ you think faintly. Tally up the numbers: 

104 abstentions

2 absences

99 votes for Kingsley Shacklebolt

And. And. And.

99 votes for Percy fucking Weasley.

You close your eyes, briefly overwhelmed. You can see Shacklebolt turn to you, a rictus of a smile on his face. His handshake is very brief. You take it, and nod to him, and then work your way down; you’re very numb. No, worse. Your ears are ringing. You aren’t certain if this is you being so happy you’ll be sick or just plain sick.

“A battle very well-fought,” says one of the people crowding around you, clapping your back, straining for your hand. “When was the last time a recommendation vote came out to a tie, laddy? Why, I can’t even-”

“-1843,” you say, because you’ve never known when to shut up. 

Then, pasting on a smile, you keep going. It was a mistake to send Roger away. You need someone to buffet the sheer number of people around you; you can already feel the itch of phantom fire in your fingers. The absolute last thing you need is to burn down the  _ Wizengamot. _

Your mind goes into overtime. Looking, desperately, for any sort of an excuse not to speak to these people; you need to, you have to, but you don’t  _ want  _ to, not when your family is about a hundred feet away and approaching you with all the grace of a stampeding herd of buffalo. Something glitters in the corner of your eye and you blink, and that’s when you remembers: you have to go talk to Audrey Smithson, and you have to do it in Hogsmeade, and you- you-

You have an excuse.

“I believe the  _ Prophet’s  _ waiting for me,” you announce, and take off like a bullet.

Someone shouts your name. You pretend you don’t know who it is.

(You do: you’ve dreamt about their screams for years now. But you aren’t quite brave enough to turn around or stop or speak to them. Not after today. Not when what happened is still something you’re digesting, very slowly, like one of Hagrid’s inedible rock cakes. You know what your brothers’ screams sound like because it has played in the back of your head like a badly tuned radio, high and low and high and low, ever since you walked out the door. You know that it is Bill who’s shouting. You  _ know.) _

You manage to make it outside, and there’s an apparition corner right there- in the corner- and you throw yourself into it like it’ll save you.

…

You apparate to a set of cliffs. Your posh robes will get ruined in the rain, so you cannot stay there for very long. But for just a moment, you let the pouring rain soak your hair, weight your shoulders. You let the skies weep for you when you cannot, and you let the bruises of the rain hurt, and it is only when the hand clenched around your heart eases that you apparate to Hogsmeade.

…

Audrey Smithson looks up at you. 

She is very beautiful. Distantly, you think about kissing her; you think you would enjoy it very much. But you are not there for that. You sit down, instead, and smile at her, and say, “I’m sure you’ve many questions, Ms. Smithson.”

“How do you feel now that you’ve tied with Acting Minister Shacklebolt in the recommendation vote?”

“The Wizengamot could not make up its mind. Clearly, they’ve left that up to the public.” Your lips twitch. “I say that I cannot wait.”

“Do you have any words for Lord Flint?”

“I look forward to working with him,” you say.

She arches an eyebrow. “You’re very confident today.”

“I have spent months talking to the people of this country,” you say forcefully. Fiercely. Furiously. “I know what makes them angry, and I know what makes them hurt, and I know what it takes to make them happy. I am here for  _ them,  _ Audrey. Not for anyone else in this entire world. I am working for  _ them, _ because that is what is necessary to ensure that we can become what Merlin once dreamed of our nation. I am doing all of this for  _ them,  _ and that is why I am confident that I will win, because the people of this country know who’s going to back them when the road gets narrow and hard and terrible. They know what I’m capable of, but more importantly- most importantly- they know what  _ they’re  _ capable of, and that’s why on the morning after the summer solstice you will be seeing my name in the papers.”

She stares at you. 

“Print that,” you tell her softly, and smile.

…

The next day, you go to Shell Cottage. You don’t know where it is, exactly, but you know the village near it and you walk from there down to the beach. It’s a warm morning, but windy. You take off your shoes and loop them over your shoulders, and let the grainy sand dig between your toes. It’s a nice feeling. You want to go slow: for the first time in a while, the weekend is free for you. So you don’t rush it. Just amble along, feet warm on warm sand, wand actually out of your grasp, hair blowing in the salt breeze.

You stop when you see the stairs.

They’re rather cunningly hidden; a muggle wouldn’t even realize they existed, and most any wizard would overlook it, too. It’s only because you’re so calm that you can feel the quiet prickle of ambient magic in the area.

You don’t go up them; you’d rather not cause Bill or Fleur a heart attack. You sit down instead, and relax in the sand, and wait.

It doesn’t take long before someone crunches over to you, but when you look up, it isn’t Bill.

“Ginny,” you say, a little startled. Not so much by her presence as by the baby she’s holding in her arms. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she says, sitting down five feet away from you. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to Bill. Or Charlie. I thought he’d be rooming here.”

“And you got me. Tough.”

“Not so bad a replacement,” you say dryly. “Why are  _ you  _ here?”

“I couldn’t handle Mum,” Ginny tells you. “She’s gone insane. Doesn’t want me to do anything but Ministry work. Desk jobs all bloody day. No matter how much I tell her, she just won’t listen.”

“Desk jobs aren’t that bad.”

“I’d set fire to the desk in a week,” says Ginny flatly, and you laugh.

You also take Victoire from her and bounce her a little. Pull some faces. Grin back at Ginny, who goes on talking, explaining how she’d kicked Charlie back to the Burrow because he’d had his week of freedom already; Bill and Fleur are on a romantic date in the village nearby for lunch. How disgusting they are as a couple. How she’s probably going to make a quidditch team, so her NEWTs don’t really matter, even if- yes,  _ yes,  _ she’s studying,  _ Merlin,  _ get that look off your face. Harry’s fun to be around and she’s happy with him. Really happy. Maybe even permanently happy.

You’d forgotten how much Ginny can talk if you let her. You’ve only spent two years at Hogwarts together- and one of those Ginny had been under the influence of a piece of Voldemort’s soul- but there had been good times there, when you’d sit on your bed and let her regale you with stories of everyone and everything for a good couple of hours. It wasn’t gossip because you didn’t know any of the people involved, never reciprocated, and always forgot it immediately, but what had mattered for Ginny was the  _ listening,  _ and that’s something you’ve always been good at. It rather surprises you now, how much you’d missed it.

By the time she winds down, Victoire’s asleep in your arms and you’re lying flat on the beach, uncaring of the sand that you’ll have to wash out of your hair; the jacket’s one that you’ve been using for years now, and probably past time to cut into rags.

“So,” says Ginny, finally. “Why’re you here?”

“To thank you,” you say. Turn, a little, just enough that you can see Ginny and not dislodge Victoire. The sun glimmers out from the clouds for a brief moment, colorless light catching on Ginny’s lovely hair, on her bright eyes, and you swallow. “For yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’d think you’d be busy going around and- you know-” she waves a hand dismissively, “-beating Kingsley.”

“I gave my campaign the weekend off.” You laugh shortly. “Prematurely, as it turns out.”

For a long moment, Ginny doesn’t say anything. Then: “You thought you’d lose?”

“I spent the day before yesterday calling Flint a bigot and a Death Eater. I didn’t want Roger to have to face the blowout.”

“You called Marcus fucking Flint a Death Eater?” demands Ginny. “To his _ face?” _

“Yeah,” you say. “It wasn’t one of my prouder moments.”

“Why the hell not!”

“Because, Ginevra-” you cannot dodge the punch she aims at your arm, not without waking Victoire, so you only make a protesting noise and curl away, gasping, “-governing means making compromises. And not… insulting people.”

“I’ll leave that to you and Hermione then.”

You snort. “You think Hermione doesn’t insult people?”

“I think  _ you  _ insult people, Percy,” says Ginny, and you’re forced to concede the point. After a pause, she says, quickly, “Dad didn’t mean anything with his vote for Kingsley, by the way.”

“What did he mean, then?” you ask.

“He’d promised Kingsley his vote already,” she tells you. “He- he’d already promised.”

“In exchange for  _ what?” _

She doesn’t answer for a long minute. Then she says, “For a promise from Kingsley.” You turn to look at her, quizzically. “Not to throw you into jail if he wins.”

_ Oh,  _ you think.

You drop your head back and look up, up, up: to the clouds. To the sun beyond it, so golden it doesn’t have a color. There’s a thing you’d read, once, in a muggle textbook: that white color’s got every other color in it. Your eyes just can’t handle it, and turns it white. It’s a colorless sky, really, but according to that book, the more accurate phrase would be  _ colorful,  _ full-of-color.

“I love you,” you say quietly. “All of you.”

“I know,” says Ginny.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“If I could go back,” you say, and breathe deep, “I wouldn’t change anything.”

_ “Perce,” _ says Ginny.

“I wouldn’t be who I am without it.”

“Without working with Death Eaters?” she asks humorlessly.

“Without learning,” you correct her, deliberately, “all the shapes that evil can take.” 

“That’s- fucking terrible.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done. All the people that I’ve hurt. Killed. Muggleborns; Death Eaters. I- there’s a hundred justifications for it. I was alone; I was afraid; I didn’t do anything myself. Sure, I burned paperwork here, I misfiled a report there- but I signed off on people’s deaths too, and- and- well. One doesn’t cancel out the other. It doesn’t work that way. I watched as my government and country burned, and waited for a child to save us all. I watched. And that’s what’s going to be on my epitaph. He  _ watched.” _

“Oh, Percy.”

“I’m not going to watch any longer,” you tell her. “I’m through with watching.”

“I know,” says Ginny, and reaches out a hand, and tangles her fingers with yours.

You breathe in, out, and don’t look away from the sky so bright it hurts. There are tears in your eyes; you cannot tell if there are clouds. All you know is this gold-blue-white-bright-bright-bright light, and it hurts, and it burns, and you do not dare to close your eyes because, suddenly, you have never seen anything more beautiful. 

“I know, Percy,” murmurs Ginny, and her hand is warm in yours, and you grip it back tightly. “I know.”

…

You don’t wait for Bill and Fleur. Instead, you bid goodbye to Ginny and then spend the rest of the day hiking over the Hebrides. Your feet ache. Your nose is stuffy; you’re probably coming down with a cold. You haven’t washed the sand from your hair, but you’ve stripped off the jacket, and it’s  _ cold  _ up here, but you want to avoid sand down your collar more than you want to avoid the inevitable fever.

It’s at sunset.

You pause for a moment. Wipe the sweat from your brow. Look up, shading your eyes, at the horizon. 

And there, wings glowing in the sunset, is a dragon. Upon second look, it is fat and old and sagging. Its wings are tattered things, and any dragonscale would probably look counterfeit, it’s that dull. But its white scales are burnished gold by the sunset, a glorious gold-scarlet-vermilion. It is flying, in that uniquely draconic corkscrew that always draws your breath away. 

It is not a British dragon, but it has spent so long here that it has no other home. It has been hurt and mutilated and tortured, for years and years and years, but it is here now, and it is dancing in the wind of a glorious sunset. And, when you look closer, it has some Hebridean Blacks circling around it, calling, being called to: after decades of loneliness, here, it has found companionship.

You’ve cried so-  _ much.  _

You don’t want to cry any longer.

So you just stand there, until the Ukrainian Ironbelly disappears once again, and the sunset has faded into the duller purples of twilight, and you’ll probably have to take two Pepper-ups to be functional in the morning. Only then, heart hurting a good, sweet kind of hurt- like an open wound being stitched shut, do you apparate home.

…

A month later, you’re- not in your own home.

It’s Roger’s mother’s home, one that she hasn’t used in years. Roger opens it up to everyone from the campaign, and that includes most of your family. You’ve already spoken to most of them after the recommendation vote, but today is not one for family: people have been voting all day, and the election results should come in by midnight. Roger’s actually managed to finagle some people from the Department of Mysteries to enchant fireworks about his house to shine gold if you win and silver if Kingsley wins, to erupt as soon as the ancient magic around the Wizengamot declares a winner.

But it’s exhausting, putting on such a bright face for someone who you genuinely do not know; you think it would be easier if you could hide in the attic for a couple of minutes and  _ not  _ think about how much is at stake here, and how nervous you are, and if you really  _ spoke  _ to that community in Paxton properly; you’d been a bit too dehydrated, and you’d cut the question-answer session short because of it, but you have a bad feeling that it’s affected how they see you, and-

“Hey,” says Audrey Smithson. You groan internally; she might be one of the worse people to appear in front of you while on the verge of a panic attack. But then her face softens into something like concern. “You okay?”

“It’s been a long campaign,” you grit out.

“I think you should sit down.” She doesn’t look alarmed, exactly, but it’s definitely bordering the concern and that is  _ not  _ what you should be showing a reporter thirty- no,  _ twenty-  _ minutes before the results come. “Really, Percy.”

“I cannot-”

“I know you don’t trust me.” She takes your elbow and, subtly, steers you towards the stairs. “But believe me, I’ve got bigger scoops than you being nervous on election night. Honestly.”

“I-”

“I’ll send someone up in five minutes,” says Audrey, and her eyes are very bright, and the clips shining in her hair are glittering under the chandelier, and you want to thank her with too much fervency, really, for something so simple. “Go on. Before anyone notices.”

“Thank you,” you tell her.

She smiles at you: a different smile than anything you’ve seen before from her. Wider, and brighter, and warmer, too. 

“Look like a proper Minister when you come down those stairs,” she tells him. “I’ll make sure my photographer’s ready for the best angles.”

You manage to nod at her and then escape, winding up and up and up until you’re at the attic and breathless. It’s very musty up here- clearly, Mrs. Davies hadn’t anticipated someone coming this far into the home- but you don’t even mind the dust for once; you’re too busy trying to breathe.

Then, almost before you know it, Luna’s next to you.

“I didn’t expect you,” you blurt out.

Luna- whose hair is caught in some magical net that glows a deep, malicious shade of black- laughs, high and airy. “Your campaign’s reporter is a very smart woman.” She sits down at your feet and places her chin on her knees. “She likes you a lot, Percy.”

“I like her too.”

“You should tell her that.”

“Right before I know whether I’m a Minister or a fugitive?” you ask, mirthless. “Or should I wait until after?”

“After,” says Luna. “Definitely after.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if this fails,” you say softly.

“Come with me,” says Luna. “I’m going to Chile tomorrow. There’s always space in my camp for someone who can tell me about proper potions manufacturing.”

“If not a Minister, then a magizoologist?” you ask wryly. “Why not! It doesn’t even sound out of character for me to do it, at this point!”

Luna pats your knee. “You,” she says, “are a far better man than you think.”

“Thank you,” you say softly. You cannot look at Luna when you say this, but you can feel her eyes regarding you, silver as the sea and shining. “For... starting this. Spurring me on. Without you I’d have been- wandering the hills, still. Walking up and down, aimless. Probably would’ve gone back to the Ministry and accepted whatever desk job Kingsley gave me.”

“I could see your unhappiness,” says Luna. “On your skin. You hated- everything.”

“’S what you get,” you tell her. “When you forget how good it feels to make something.”

“And-”

Both of you jerk upright when there’s a sound at the window. You turn, and approach it. There’s a rider outside, on a broom, in a cloak. Instantly, you raise your wand.

“That’s-”

“Alohamora,” says Luna calmly.

You glare at her- neither of you know who it is!- when George tumbles inside. 

“George?” you ask dumbly.

“Hey, Percy,” he grunts.

Both of you stare at each other incredulously. After a long moment, Luna steps up to you and kisses you on the cheek, and then turns and leaves. You glance back at George. 

“Er,” you say. “What are you doing here?”

“I mean,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting you to be in the attic, but. I’ve been thinking, you know. About… a lot of things. Thought I should talk to you before the whole- thing happens.”

“You mean the election results?” you ask, a little wilder than you’d like; the twins have always been good at making you feel unhinged. 

Well. The twins have always been good at _ making  _ you unhinged.

“It doesn’t matter to me if you’re Minister or not,” says George, a little defiantly. “This is between me and you. That’s what matters.”

“Um. Okay?”

“Okay,” says George, and sags.

You sigh. Put your elbows on your knees, and look at him. “So.”

“So,” echoes George. “So. I’m- you heard what I said, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I meant it.”

“That,” you tell him, “does not surprise me.”

George snorts. “Well, you’ve never imagined us to be better than who we are, have you?”

“What’s  _ that  _ supposed to mean?”

“You never liked us.” George shrugs. “We never liked you either, Perce. It happens.”

“I never asked you to like me,” you say flatly. “But not wanting me dead is a pretty low bar, I think.”

“I meant it,” says George. He looks up at you. “I  _ meant  _ it. Past-tense.”

You pause. Check yourself. Try to think.

“You don’t mean it any longer?” You laugh shortly. “Try again, George. And try to get a better line.”

“I’m not lying,” he says, lowly.

“Try again,” you advise him. “And try harder.”

“I’m not lying!” George’s hands tighten into fists. “Look. I’ve been thinking. A lot. And it isn’t one or the other, yeah? Fred went and you came back: like, what the fuck is that? I don’t get it. You aren’t Fred. Fred wasn’t you. We can’t just- think about you- like that.”

_ “Thanks,” _ you say.

George sighs. “I didn’t want to think about what happened in Hogwarts for a really long time. You were the only one there with me, though, do you remember that? That’s what I remembered- you were back, and Fred laughed, and then he died.”

Bile burns in your throat. You remember that day so well; you cannot imagine how George doesn’t remember it. The scars on the backs of your calves are carved into them from marble shards, and they ache every night. Your dreams are of green light and flat eyes and blood, so dark against the dusty white floor; it’s why you don’t sleep. 

“I can’t listen to this,” you say tiredly. You get up. Brush the dust off your robes. “Look, George. Thanks for coming, I suppose. I’ll see you after this whole-”

“You saved my life.”

“-election is-” you pause. “What did you say?”

“You saved my life.”

“When did I do that?” you ask, bewildered.

“In Hogwarts.”

“George-”

“Everyone ran away,” he says quietly. “You stayed back. You- I remember you screaming. Have you been back to Hogwarts after?”

“I,” you say. “No?”

He nods, running a hand through his hair. “That hallway’s destroyed.”

“A lot of Hogwarts was destroyed.”

“Perce,” says George. “It would’ve crushed me. I wouldn’t have moved for anything. Not then.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“I cursed you. I remember that, too.”

You sigh. “You weren’t in your right mind. Do you think I don’t know that?”

“You got us out even though I cursed you,” says George. “You were  _ bleeding out,  _ and you got us to the Great Hall, and you saved us, and- and- I don’t know how!”

“What’s there to know?” you demand back. “I Stunned you and dragged you out. Then I went back for Fred. When I came to the Hall, Mum saw you guys and- that was what happened there.” You shift, uneasy. “I’m sure you remember the rest.”

“You never told anyone, though.”

“What was there to say?” you ask. “That you lashed out? What does it  _ matter, _ George?”

“I cursed your fucking throat,” says George. “Or have  _ you _ forgotten that bit?”

(He’d silenced you. Well, no; George had done quite a bit more than that when you tried to pull Fred out from the rubble. His spell had slowly eaten like acid through your vocal cords. He’d also thrown you into the far wall with the force of the curse. It’s where the scars on the backs of your calves come from. 

You remember the way you’d tried to scream but only managed a wheeze. It’d taken you some time to realize what was happening, to recognize the curse; after that, it took you some more time to work through the exquisite agony of it. 

But you are Percy Weasley. The truest thing you’ve ever known: anyone younger than you must always be protected. And for everything else they are and everything else they’ve done, the twins are younger than you.

So you’d dragged yourself up, and you’d sent a Stupefy at George and dragged him back to the Great Hall. That had been difficult; the most frightening five minutes of your life. Your wand has never moved faster than in that desperate flight back, George a weight on your spine, tears soaking into your collar. In comparison, you hadn’t cared very much about bringing Fred back: he had already died, and so you didn’t need to worry about taking an  _ Avada  _ to the back. What did it matter if you also died in the attempt?

But you hadn’t. 

You’d brought Fred back, and you’d laid him out, and then you’d made yourself scarce, as much as possible when everyone knew your red hair. Then you’d disappeared into your own home, after everything was over, and you’d scrubbed off in your little shower and then you’d brewed the potion that restored your vocal chords, and only then, fixed and clean and the tiniest bit less raw, did you return to the Burrow.)

“It’s not like you killed me,” you say wearily.

“It might’ve been,” George says loudly. “It should’ve been! I fucking destroyed your throat, and you still managed to get us out, and-”

“Stop saying  _ us!”  _ you shout.

George freezes.

You turn away from him, trembling. “He’s gone,” you say. “Fred is gone. I watched him die. I wasn’t going to let you die, too. It isn’t as big of a deal as you’re making it.”

“Perce,” says George, and you shudder. He comes closer and puts his hand on your shoulder. “I’ve been a bit shitty to you.”

You laugh, wetly. “I haven’t been really nice back either.”

“Bill told me to come to your- vote. Thing. Recommendation or whatever. I said no.”

“I know.”

“You know why?”

“Because you don’t think I’m capable. Because you don’t like me. Because you like Kingsley more.” You wave a hand. “Take your pick.”

“Because,” says George slowly, “I was thinking about you.”

“George-”

“-no,” he says. “You’re going to listen to me.” He waits until you nod. Then he says, “You’re an annoying son of a bitch. I don’t- I don’t  _ get  _ how you’ve made it this far in this- this election. You aren’t popular, or nice, or even- like-  _ likable.  _ But if so many people are here- if so many people want this- you must’ve done something. So I started to listen to your speeches. And that’s when it hit me.

“Your campaign slogan is  _ let us dream.”  _ George’s eyes are very, very solemn, and very wide; he looks like he’s on the verge of something momentous. Like he’s saying something too, too important. “But. Perce. Every single speech, you talk about  _ doing  _ things. Not watching. Not dreaming.”

There is something caught in your throat. 

There is something too large for your skin caught in your throat.

There is something too large to ever be spoken aloud caught in your throat.

“You said it just now,” says George softly. “Didn’t you?”

“I,” you say raggedly. “I- I don’t-”

“You watched. And you’re making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

_ “George,”  _ you say.

“You’re doing this for him.”

“Of course I’m doing this for him!” you snap. “What’d you think, that I’d move past seeing my brother being killed in front of me?”

George steps up to you and shakes you by the shoulders. “What else was I supposed to think!” he yells back. “You’d disappear! And then come back! And act like everything’s normal-”

_ “-normal,”  _ you say, so sharp it burns. “Normal?  _ Normal?  _ I watched Fred die because I distracted him,  _ I killed my brother,  _ and you think I was fine? You think I  _ am  _ fine? I walked away and then none of you came for me! I spent a year killing other people because I was too afraid to do anything else, and you think I was  _ fine?  _ I have so many sins to choose from, and all of you  _ idiotic  _ people had to pick the one I couldn’t do anything about!”

George recoils. You shove him back, long past any vestige of calm. His shoulder knocks some glass thing to pieces, and you swallow at the shock of sound, chest heaving.

“You- you didn’t kill Fred.”

“No,” you say tiredly. “I didn’t. I can even make myself believe that, most days.”

“Percy,” he says.

“Enough.”

“No,” says George, and steps forwards, and grips you tight, tight,  _ tight,  _ about the scruff of the neck.  _ “Not _ enough. Listen to me. Fred died, and- yeah, I was a bit of a bastard about it. But it isn’t about- exchanging places, or whatever, with a fucking dead man. We’re here now, yeah? And- and it isn’t easy. I know that. But Luna’s right.”

“Luna?” you ask, startled.

“I heard her, before I came in.” George’s hand flattens on your shoulder. Loops around, then reels you into an embrace. “You’re a bastard, too, you know. More secrets than fucking- Dumbledore. Only he took credit for things he didn’t even do, turns out, and you just let everyone hate you.”

You snort. “I’m not  _ that  _ self-sacrificing.”

“Pretty fucking close, in my books.”

“George-”

“Shut  _ up,”  _ he says, without heat, and you snap your jaw closed. “Look, Perce: you’re annoying as all hell, and you’re too quiet, and you’ve always- just- let us think you don’t care. Honest to Merlin. That’s what we all thought. Then it turns out it isn’t that you don’t care at all. Luna was fucking  _ right:  _ you’re a hell of a better man than you think.”

You drop your forehead to George’s shoulder. You are crying again, and you cannot stop, and this is not- it isn’t the breathless kind of sobs, or the wrenching kind; it’s just tears flowing from your eyes like a fountain, unstoppable and wet and constant. But George just keeps talking, and his hands are large and bracing on your waist, and you are a dragon, white-winged and old and singing in a sunset; you are a cliff, smoothed by time giving way to rough stone once more; you are an island, glowing with the sun and battered by the storms.

“I love you,” says George, and it isn’t much, really, not much of anything at all, but somehow it’s the most important thing you’ve ever heard in your life: not a benediction, not a relief, just your younger brother holding you close, when you’d given up on the dream.

Distantly, you hear the rockets. 

_ The election,  _ you think, and shake. _Gold for me, and silver for Kingsley._

You do not want to lift your head. You do not want to see what has happened, because you think that anything that taints this moment- this dark, blood-rich, emotion-sodden moment- will shatter you.

“Perce,” says George. “Oh, Percy,  _ look.” _

But beneath that fear is a hope of an idea. Beneath your pale, flinching skin, there is a Gryffindor’s blood. Beneath the chill of your bones is your marrow, and that has never been any less than you’ve needed.

You look up. There are tears in your eyes, and you cannot see clearly, but what it is does not matter, because you can still see  _ light,  _ all around you, bright as day, bright as sunlight.

And:  _ oh,  _ you think, and clutch onto George- and what fortune, that the brother you never thought to be returned to you is here, that though this is the beginning of the longest road you will ever have to tread, it begins with him beside you, as he had been when your brother’s death shattered the previous one- and breathe, and cry, all the harder.

Light streams around the both of you, and you smile, as well, through the tears, through the grief.

Light streams around you, and it is as golden and gilded as a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's finished reading! I have read and loved all of your comments, and I cannot express my gratitude for them all. I hope you enjoyed the last part of this story xxx


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